Apple is making a big push to turn HealthKit into a diagnostic tool, Bloomberg reports. The app currently collects fitness data from a user’s devices, but people familiar with Apple’s plans said the company has scores of health-care experts building improved software to analyze and understand the implication’s of patient information. The team is also working on new apps for the Apple Watch, including one that tracks sleep patterns and another that gauges fitness levels by measuring the time it takes a user’s heart rate to fall from peak to resting levels.
The sources said the company’s ultimate goal is improving diagnoses, allowing data to be transferred from hospital to hospital across multiple databases, making it easier for physicians to pick useful information out of the mountains of collected data. Apple recently purchased health-data startup Gliimpse, which built its own software platform to allow people to collect, personalize, and share a picture of their health data. In May, CEO Tim Cook laid out Apple’s vision for how the Apple Watch and other potential devices would use all the data collected to serve a single purpose. “The holy grail of the watch is being able to monitor more and more of what’s going on in your body,” Cook said. “If you could have a device that knew so much about you, it would be incredible, and would extend life and extend quality. I’m not saying one device will do all of that.”