Apple Watch: A Key Player in Healthcare Technology

Apple products are always trendy. And the Apple Watch, considered a pioneer in wearable innovation, is looked to as a leader in a multitude of industries, particularly healthcare. The gravitational pull Apple has on other brands and companies is enormous due to the company’s ability to capture the hearts of consumers and lead sales in the marketplace. This power allows it to also lead the way for innovation in healthcare technology and forge beneficial changes in the overall industry.

Increasing Awareness for Preventative Healthcare

Apple products are always trendy. And the Apple Watch, considered a pioneer in wearable innovation, is looked to as a leader in a multitude of industries, particularly healthcare. The gravitational pull Apple has on other brands and companies is enormous due to the company’s ability to capture the hearts of consumers and lead sales in the marketplace. This power allows it to also lead the way for innovation in healthcare technology and forge beneficial changes in the overall industry.

Increasing Awareness for Preventative Healthcare

This 2016 year, people will increasingly utilize their access to information through digital means to benefit their health and well-being. Apple Watch’s HealthKit is raising and encouraging awareness of health by helping users track and monitor fitness and vitals. The HealthKit is a virtual dashboard that’s connected to different sensors in order to record health-related information such as heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels, sleep, daily activity and exercise. It’s making health easier to keep an eye on health and could ultimately work to prevent larger medical issues through this regular maintenance and consistent awareness. Although it’s still considered pricey for the general consumer, health insurance providers could begin to cover the watch because of its ability to help consumers keep their state of well-being in check. This significant move in the insurance business would be justified since theoretically, they would save money from the decrease in expensive hospital and doctor visits that take place when health issues are ignored.  

Forging Better Doctor-Patient Relationships

With the Apple Watch, doctors can provide on-the-go healthcare to patients. The AirStrip app facilitates communications between the two parties by allowing doctors to monitor patients remotely. For instance, doctors can check a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate and lab results with a simple look at the wrist and take necessary action given this easily accessible information. Pregnant women are currently experiencing the benefits of the Airstrip’s technology that records a mother and baby’s heart rate through sensors and sends notifications to the doctor. Furthermore, when a woman goes into labor, doctors can view contractions through the watch and act accordingly based on the real-time data.

Improving Medical Efficiency

Aside from the Apple Watch AirStrip’s monitoring component, it also is improving efficiencies in overall medical operations. Doctors and nurses alike can view appointment schedules and manage their busy day with the Apple Watch. The added ability to tap into lab results and patient diagnosis information removes the physical file transfer of bulky folders from room to room, further modernizing the processes within medical facilities. The smart watch also acts as an extremely useful platform of communications between medical staff and administration so all involved can work better as one team.

More to Come

As a key player in the market, Apple Watch has the greatest potential to partner with the best of the best in healthcare to develop more health and medical apps. It’s already become more and more available through multiple service carriers like the consumer-friendly T-Mobile, and formed partnerships with leading health systems like Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins along with Epic, the nation’s top provider of electronic records. The goal is for these strategic partnerships to push further improvements in patient care and clinical data and establish standard, better practices in healthcare.

The power Apple holds to draw in consumers is what allows Apple Watch to have great potential to impact healthcare technology. Its access to top-of-line-innovation creates great opportunity for change, making it a key player in forming the framework of future systems to come in the name of health.