Ever since Apple launched the iPhone nearly two decades ago, smartphones have been blamed for a variety of health woes, from Gen Z’s short attention spans to our collective decline in sleep quality.
On Monday, Apple made its latest move to flip the script and recast its gadgets as powerful and crucial tools for attaining better health. During the company’s annual product launch event on Monday, Apple showed off new tech features aimed at addressing hearing loss and sleep apnea.
The new health-focused features, tied to Apple’s Watch and AirPods, were among the top stars of Monday’s event, drawing cheers from various observers. “AirPods Pro 2 adding a clinical grade hearing aid functionality: Awesome,” tweeted popular tech reviewer Marques Brownlee.
“Having experienced a harder time talking to my grandparents in their later years due solely to hearing loss, this is such a brilliant idea it’s crazy,” tweeted Box CEO Aaron Levie.
The offerings fit into a longstanding effort by Apple to expand into health and fitness. The iPhone has had a Health app for years, and in 2019, CEO Tim Cook said he believed that the company’s greatest contribution to society “will be about health.” And with growth in Apple’s business stalling, and increasing competition from China gadget makers, a health kick could be just the thing Apple needs to revitalize its top line.
But health technology is a challenging field for outsiders to break into — and one in which Apple has been burned before, including a temporary ban on selling its Apple Watch devices last year due to litigation around intellectual property. Throw in strict regulatory and privacy rules, and Apple’s push into health tech is hardly a sure thing.
Indeed, the launch date for some of the snazzy new health features Apple showcased on Monday were vague, and, the company noted, subject to the approval of various authorities. Shares of Apple were roughly unchanged at the close of regular trading on Monday.
Let’s get clinical
The word “clinical” appears more than a dozen times in the various press releases Apple published Monday to announce its lineup of new products.
The new Apple Watch Series 10 model features a special algorithm to monitor sleep apnea that was developed through “clinical-grade” sleep apnea tests and validated through a clinical study.
For a new AirPods Pro feature, Apple took a “clinical approach” developing a clinically-validated hearing test that will transform the headphones into a clinical-grade, over-the-counter hearing aid.
Apple’s ability to collect, analyze, and protect huge amounts of health data across a suite of devices makes feats like turning earbuds into hearing aids “something only Apple can deliver,” said Dr. Sumbul Ahmad Desai, Apple’s vice president of health, speaking at Monday’s event.
This emphasis on health and fitness fits into Apple’s longtime messaging around its unique place in the market, said Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies. With AirPods largely dominating the wireless headphones offerings, he said, Apple sees a place to innovate.
“They’ve certainly got a huge base, and a lot of people have bought into that fully integrated experience of hardware, software and services,” Bajarin said.
The hearing health features also fit into a larger effort at Apple to emphasize how much more advanced its technology is becoming, with a hope that inspired customers will finally upgrade their devices. “That was really the tone that they were pushing, which is just look how more advanced it’s gotten than ones in prior years,” Bajarin said.
Advanced though it may be, it remains to be seen whether “clinical-grade” technology is the secret to getting consumers to buy new Apple gadgets.
“My question is, are the people who would most benefit from that likely ever going to buy AirPods,” said Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.
The risks of health tech
The Apple Watch is already popular for its many health features, which can detect bodily rhythms as granular as ovulation and sleep cycles. In that sense, Apple’s new sleep apnea monitoring algorithm is following a more established path with the Watch (Apple is also not the first to offer sleep apnea detection—a number of personal devices, including Samsung’s GalaxyWatch, are approved by the FDA to do so.)
Sleep apnea detection will be available on the new Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, plus the Series 9. The feature will be released through a software update pending FDA and other regulators, which Desai said is expected “soon.”
But the Watch is also a cautionary tale of the risks in Apple’s push into health tech. Apple was forced to stop selling two of its most popular watch models in the US during the holiday season in December 2023, after a court ruled that a blood-oxygen sensor in the product violated a patent owned by medtech company Masimo. Apple eventually removed the blood-oxygen sensor from the watches in order to sell the products again.
As Apple incorporates more medical features into its products, the risks of more such disputes, as well as any problems involving the accuracy of the health data the tech provides, are only likely to increase.
According to Angelo Zino, technology equity analyst at CFRA Research, the opportunity far outweighs those risks. “Clearly greater penetration on the healthcare side of things is a massive opportunity for them, and something they seriously want to get more penetrated into,” Zino said.
He noted that Apple’s privacy-oriented focus helps to mitigate some of the risks involved, compared to other consumer tech companies pushing into medical technology.
On the whole, consumers are exploring health services online and outside of the traditional patient-doctor relationship, said Sara Geoghegan, counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Apple, in typical Apple fashion, today reiterated its focus on storing that information privately and securely locally on the device in the Health App, which Geoghegan notes is “more privacy protective than if it immediately is shared with other companies,” like a third-party app or website.
While questions are likely to arise about how accurate Apple’s health technologies perform, especially with plenty of competing health tech on the market, the company is in a unique position to design for accessibility and health awareness, O’Donnell said.
“It takes a product like the Apple Watch, that tens of millions of people have, to have that kind of an impact,” he said.
