Apple might soon become your personal health coach
Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg:
The new coaching service — codenamed Quartz — is designed to keep users motivated to exercise, improve eating habits and help them sleep better, according to people with knowledge of the project. The idea is to use AI and data from an Apple Watch to make suggestions and create coaching programs tailored to specific users, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiatives haven’t been announced yet.
The disappointing news from this piece is that it’s not expected to ship, or even be announced this year, but it’s a really exciting potential new direction for Apple Health. I’ve been meaning to write more about Apple Watch and Health, but my biggest concern is that Apple’s “close your rings” fitness strategy for Apple Watch needs to be refined. It’s too inflexible and doesn’t take into account things like amount of sleep and heart rate variability.
Giving your Apple devices the power to take all of your health data into consideration and provide you with personalized coaching would be a great benefit to Apple’s customers. I really hope this comes sooner rather than later.
In other Apple Health news, Gurman goes on to say that the Apple Health app will (finally) be coming to iPadOS later this year:
The hope is that an iPad version will boost the app’s popularity in health-care settings, where tablets have already made inroads. The app is central to the company’s health efforts, serving as a repository for fitness data collected by the Apple Watch and outside health records. It also serves as a portal for users to share information with their doctors.
This makes a ton of sense, and it also means we’re likely to get Apple Health for macOS too.
I’ve said before that we may look up in a decade and think of Apple just as much as a health and fitness company as we do a technology company.