“Apple Is Going After The Healthcare Industry, Starting With Personal Health Data”, states an recently posted article of CBInsights (2019). Over the last few years, Apple have been developing several applications and devices for users to track and monitor their own health (Apple 2019). Apple products and apps, such as Apple Health Record and Apple Watch, collect a significant amount of intimate health data. Originally, Apple’s Health app only kept track of users’ weight, exercise routines and step taken per day, but recently the app has started to store health records (Sydell 2019). Apple does not only focus on personal data tracking. According to the company, iOS devices and Apps have been implemented in several hospitals (Apple 2019). Additionally, more than 200 health care providers use the Health app to record health statistics of their patients (Sydell 2019).
What The Health (Data)?
The use of health and fitness applications to monitor your own health as increased over the last few years. An increasing number of people are using application, such as Flo Health, to track their current state of healthiness. However, a study conducted by The Wall Street Journal states that several top health and fitness applications, which are also available in the App Store, have been sharing personal information with Facebook (Schechner and Secada 2019). According to Schechner and Secada (2019), Apple does not require apps to reveal all partners data is shared with, which made it possible for app developers to share their data with Facebook. Subsequently, Facebook will use this data to generate revenue through personal advertising. Apple has stated that these third-party apps are not able to gain the data of health records (Sydell 2019). Moreover, the company promises that, in case of violation of its rules, it will warn developers to adjust the application or otherwise it will be deleted from the App Store. Nevertheless, this intimate health data cannot simply be ‘taken back’, once it is shared, which puts people’s privacy at risk. Although Apple has a good reputation regarding ‘selling data’ compared to other companies like Google or Facebook, the company recently suspended their virtual assistant Siri’s response grading due to privacy concerns (Panzarino 2019). These concerns were first expressed in an article posted by The Guardian, in which it claims that Apple contractors could hear “confidential details on Siri recordings” (Hern 2019).
In conclusion, Apple entering the healthcare system could be beneficial for the industry due to Apple’s innovative history and their great emphasis on customer needs. Nonetheless, (privacy) concerns around the sharing of intimate health information need to be evaluated and addressed. If Apple truly wants a future as a trustworthy healthcare tech provider, it must convince the public of its intentions.
What do you think: are big tech companies like Apple beneficial for the healthcare industry?
References:
Apple Inc. (2019) ‘Healthcare’. Accessed on 15 October 2019 on https://www.apple.com/healthcare/
CBInsights. (2019) ‘Apple Is Going After The Healthcare Industry, Starting With Personal Health Data’. Accessed on 16 October 2019 on https://www.cbinsights.com/research/apple-healthcare-strategy-apps/#health
Hern, A. (2019) ‘Apple contractors ‘regularly hear confidential details’ on Siri recordings’. Accessed on 16 October 2019 on https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings
Panzarino, M. (2019) ‘Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns’. Accessed on 16 October 2019 on https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/01/apple-suspends-siri-response-grading-in-response-to-privacy-concerns/
Schechner, S. and Secada, M. (2019) ‘You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.’ Accessed on 16 October 2019 on https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-give-apps-sensitive-personal-information-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636
Sydell, L. (2019) ‘ Storing Health Records on Your Phone: Can Apple Live Up To Its Privacy Values?’. Accessed on 15 October 2019 on https://www.npr.org/2019/02/27/697026827/storing-health-records-on-your-phone-can-apple-live-up-to-its-privacy-values?t=1571255459363
Hi Rowan,
Thank you for your interesting article about the balance between guarding privacy and improving public health. I believe these two phenomenons should go hand in hand.
Devices such as the Apple Watch and iPhone are great resources that can help doctors perform research on massive amounts of health data. Millions of users of those devices produce large amounts of valuable data. It should be encouraged but not forced upon the end user to participate in these kind of research projects. I believe that the end user always should be in power to decide whether or not it participates in such research. I think the power of these health research projects is in public-private cooperation, where Apple partners up with research institute to provide its data for free. In this way, Apple not only operates as a revenue generating machine, but also gives back to society.
Moreover, regarding the sharing of user’s individual health records, with for example its GP or doctor, I believe the power should also be in the end user’s hands. It’s all upon the platform owner (in this case Apple), to safeguard the privacy.
Apple has always positioned itself as the most privacy-friendly tech producer around, storing health data only on internal chips on its devices and never sending it to external servers without the user’s permission. With that, Apple is on a great journey to be a global leader on producing valuable health data.