Apple Rumored to Introduce Watch Apps That Make Living a Healthier Life Easy

Apple Rumored to Introduce Watch Apps That Make Living a Healthier Life Easy
Text Size
- +

Toggle Dark Mode

The Apple Watch might soon be able to tell you how healthy you are, rather than just giving you raw data, a new report says.

Since its release, the Apple Watch has been advertised as a device with a health- and fitness-focus. But the Watch never gave you any interpretation of the data it collected — it simply gave you raw numbers that you were supposed to make sense of yourself. But, according to some sources cited by Bloomberg, that could all change very soon.

“If you drive for a while and your car gets too hot, it says pull over. If you need an oil change, it says check your oil. What’s the equivalent for the body?” CEO Tim Cook said earlier this year at a conference in Amsterdam.

“Health is a huge issue around the world and we think it’s ripe for simplicity and a new view,” Cook added, perhaps hinting at an overall change to how Apple views it approach to health.

To foster in this change, Cupertino is reportedly working on building improved software and apps that could help Watch users and their healthcare providers analyze and understand the data that the company’s devices collect. Among them is an app that helps users track sleep patterns, and another gauges overall fitness by measuring the time it takes for a user’s heart rate to fall from peak to resting levels, according to Bloomberg.

Measuring heart rate recovery time is — if combined with other data such as sex, height and weight — a good overall indicator of general fitness. And it’s something that professional athletes, trainers and healthcare practitioners have been doing for a while now. But implementing that ability into a commercially available wearable would probably be a first — not only for the company, but for the industry as a whole, according to BGR.

There’s currently no timeframe on when these apps will be available, and Apple hasn’t offered any statement on the matter. But it’s worth noting that neither of the aforementioned apps would require any new or innovative hardware. Sleep tracking devices have already been around for a while, and heart rate measurements are already included in all versions of the Apple Watch, according to Engadget.

But, if these reports turn out to be true, these efforts will likely be part of a broader attempt for Apple to redefine its health focus. Among Cupertino’s plans is a way to tweak HealthKit to not only collect data, but to “improve diagnoses.” For example, a user and their primary healthcare practitioner could look for symptoms or signs of a certain medical condition via the collected data. Alternatively, a better-focused HealthKit could help patients track their recovery progress, Engadget reported.

Bloomberg’s sources even report that Apple’s greater ambitions include the implementation of its technology into the actual healthcare industry — seeing Apple-branded software and hardware in hospitals across the country. Obviously, if these plans actually come to fruition, it’ll be a huge step forward for Apple — and the company’s bottom line. But it also might improve health care overall, and it could make a healthy lifestyle a more accessible goal for Apple users.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]

Sponsored
Social Sharing