Apple has made it clear it sees health monitoring as an important part of its business. And now analysts from Morgan Stanley are urging the company combine its efforts with Haven, a partnership of Amazon and others hoping to improve health care while also making it more affordable.
But it’s not clear how Apple would benefit from any such collaboration.
Apple brings a lot to the table
“We believe Apple joining Haven would fill two important gaps: 1) the ability to continuously monitor biometric data and 2) provide a platform to aggregate health information and in turn deliver new health services. Both are important as we transition to consumer-centric healthcare,” the Morgan Stanley analysts told investors.
Apple Watch and iPhones help users monitor their health, taking care of the first point. And the analysts suggest “iCloud could become the go-to cloud service for storing individual’s health data.”
What would Apple get?
Haven is partnership of Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway. Its mission is to “transform health care to create better outcomes and overall experience, as well as lower costs for you and your family.”
Haven is still very new, and currently has little more to offer Apple than its vision and access to the employees of the three founding companies, many of whom are doubtless already iPhone/Apple Watch owners. As such, it’s not clear how much value Apple would see in such a collaboration.
Also, the suggestion from the Morgan Stanley analysts that health records be stored in iCloud is quite different from how Apple handles this process currently. The company already enables users to store their records in the iOS Health app, but information transferred from doctors to users’ iPhones doesn’t even go through Apple servers, much less get stored there. This system is designed to carefully protect the privacy of the users.
Morgan Stanley predicted earlier this month at Apple’s foray into health care will be a digital disruption to the industry worth as much as $313 billion by 2027.
Via: Geekwire
