Apple’s health team loses medical researcher Stephen Friend

Apple has been making some high-profile hires in the medical research world, but one of its recent hires is already departing the company, CNBC reports. Stephen Friend, a well-known medical researcher who joined Apple in 2016 with a background in creating patient-focused research programs, is now listed as an “independent entrepreneur” on his LinkedIn page. The former Harvard Medical School professor joined Stanford’s Dr. Sumbul Desai, the former head of that schools Center for Digital Health as the company was working on “a medical records beta launched with the support of a dozen leading hospitals to aggregate all of this health information in one place.” That beta was released last month, allowing users to store information about allergies, conditions, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures and other vitals in partnership with hospitals like Cedars-Sinai, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Penn Medicine and the University of California, San Diego.