The company is working on big things, but employees disagree over whether they should be serving people who are healthy or sick.
In 2011, a startup called Avolonte Health set up shop in a small office park in Palo Alto, California. The company operated out of a bland, two-story building bristling with security cameras. Engineers interviewing for jobs there weren’t even told what they’d be working on. Once new hires made their way into the lab, however, they learned that they would be trying to revolutionize diabetes care.
Even setting aside the formidable technical challenges, health care is a different beast from consumer electronics and telecommunications, two sectors that Apple has successfully disrupted but which only very rarely deal with death and disease. “The things that they’re trying to do are not easy,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. An Apple spokesman declined to comment, but the company has said its work remains early.
In Apple’s ideal future, people will need fewer single-function medical devices like blood pressure checkers and thermometers, fewer blood draws and fewer visits to the doctor. Cook has said that improving health will prove to be his company’s “greatest contribution to mankind.” That future could be very lucrative for the company: The health and fitness tracker market is rapidly growing, with some projecting it will become a nearly $200 billion-a-year industry within a decade.
Only Apple’s most senior executives were aware of what was taking place in the office 15 minutes from headquarters. Avolonte was not listed in any official Apple system, and employees were barred from bringing Apple apparel into the vicinity. Staffers donned badges with an Avolonte logo . And when Cook would visit the office for a status update, he’d arrive in a baseball cap, pulled low to avoid detection.
Faced with these limitations, Apple decided it made little sense to market the watch primarily as a health device. Instead, it was positioned as a bling-y tech accessory for managing incoming calls and texts, tracking fitness and, of course, telling the time. The then-design chief, Jony Ive, legendary for helping Jobs hone Apple’s austerely luxurious aesthetic, prodded the company into offering $17,000 watch variants made from rose gold.
Prototypes and projects that don’t make it to market are commonplace in the tech world. However, some of those working on the new technologies have chafed at the cautious nature of Apple’s efforts. They say company engineers and doctors have long had to contend with fears from top executives that a poor medical experience with Apple could tarnish the perception of the company.
Meanwhile, Apple is laying the groundwork to turn the Vision Pro headset into a health device. The company is working on new anti-anxiety and enhanced meditation features for the product and on a virtual-reality system to reinforce positive thinking and improve mental health. Apple has also been studying using the sensors in the device to scan a wearer’s eyes for cognitive health data.
Apple had ambitions of building something similar. The concept, known within the company as Infinite Health, was for Apple to push into consumer medical care, building clinics across major cities and even within its retail stores, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The clinics would feature the open spaces and clean lines of an Apple retail store and sleek equipment like the non-inflating blood-pressure cuff.
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