Apple Acquires Personal Health Data Recording Platform 'Gliimpse'

[MacRumors]

Apple has acquired personal health and wellness startup Gliimpse, continuing its push into the health and fitness landscape that it began focusing on with the launch of the Apple Watch.

The company made the acquisition earlier in the year, according to Fast Company, but Apple has now confirmed the purchase with its usual response: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Gliimpse is a personal health platform that collects various fitness-related pieces of data for its users "to collect, personalize, and share a picture of their health data" at different stages of their personal journey. The company was funded by entrepreneur Anil Sethi and was founded in 2013, following Sethi's inspiration to create an easy way to track health data as he watched his sister battle breast cancer.

Gliimpse(TM) began with a simple idea - everyone should be able to manage their health records, and share them securely with those they trust. Currently in stealth, Gliimpse is healthcare's platform for building patient-centric apps. By unlocking hospital silos, we aggregate fragmented data into Medicare mandated patient summaries. Gliimpse is your personal health history, in the palm of your hands.

As seen on the company's website, Gliimpse also lets users make daily journal entries to chronicle their emotional state of mind, track lab results, record levels of pain to inform a physician, and other privacy features that ensure each user's data stays secure. These features mark Gliimpse as a more healthcare-focused experience for users with serious ailments like diabetes and cancer, in contrast to more casual health upkeep apps, like Apple Health.

The new acquisition is a continuation of Apple's efforts to bolster its presence in the digital health field. Earlier in the month, the company re-hired Flipboard co-founder Evan Doll for a secretive position in its health initiative, and it's even been rumored that Apple is working on a new piece of hardware with a health-tracking focus -- which might also be another Apple Watch -- for release in 2017.

Apple's focus on health and wellness (which will also expand to mindfulness with its Breathe Apple Watch app this fall) was summarized by CEO Tim Cook when he appeared on "Mad Money" earlier in the year. Specifically, when host Jim Cramer asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."

Article Link: Apple Acquires Personal Health Data Recording Platform 'Gliimpse'

 

[RedOrchestra]

...asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.

 

[Porco]

Hopefully the first thing they do is fix that keyboard with the sticky 'i' key. Apple have experience with the letter 'i' appearing everywhere, but have managed to control that a lot more in recent years.

More seriously, this appears to be positive news. Health monitoring and analysis is honestly one of the most exciting areas of technology Apple seem to be interested in as far as I am concerned, because they have an established record of actually caring about customers' privacy a little more than some of their competitors.

 

[djcerla]

"when host Jim Cramer asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."

add "signal a heart attack 30 minutes before it strikes" and you have the complete picture of Tim Cook's professional life main goal.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.

Not at all. That's the ultimate future goal - medicine straight out of Star Trek. The context of the question and the answers made it perfectly clear that we're talking about future possibilities; 20-40 years. That's a long, long time in technology.

It's what they're working towards. Nothing's impossible.

 

[skinned66]

I'd just be happy to not have to write custom solutions to format & use my health kit exports.

 

[BuffaloTF]

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.

Not only is it not baiting, I don't know that it's even impossible right now. "A device paired with HealthKit"... A device... any device -- HealthKit isn't an app per se, it's a base code and a common dashboard that relies on something else using it. I don't think it'd be very difficult to make a PET scan interface with HealthKit and report your results into it. Costly, sure - but that's in the cost of the machine itself, not the integration... but definitely possible. The other items already exist today with products already in the market.

 

[SandboxGeneral]

Not at all. That's the ultimate future goal - medicine straight out of Star Trek. The context of the question and the answers made it perfectly clear that we're talking about future possibilities; 20-40 years. That's a long, long time in technology.

It's what they're working towards. Nothing's impossible.

Much agreed. Just like 1,500 years ago we knew the Earth was the center of the universe and now we know much better. Imagine what we might know tomorrow or 20 to 40 years from now as our technology and knowledge gets better and better.

 

[T Coma]

device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."​

Considering his ever-evolving definition of cancer (e.g., sitting, FBI software requests), there's no doubt that "Healthkit" will be able to detect something that can fit this prediction.

 

[name99]

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.

And you say this based on your deep knowledge of the field, do you?
http://www.owlstonenanotech.com/medical/apps/diagnose-lung-cancer

 

[zombierunner]

Apple is such a big hoarder

 

[RedOrchestra]

And you say this based on your deep knowledge of the field, do you?

So all watch users will be walking around exhaling into their watch's build-it gas analyser app to see if they have lung cancer, yeah?

 

[winston1236]

I like the idea of this but like anything else online, it's vulnerable to theft and would rather keep my health info offline.

 

[citysnaps]

So all watch users will be walking around exhaling into their watch's build-it gas analyser app to see if they have lung cancer, yeah?

Within a lifetime of 40 or so years? Well, when difficult problems are approached without vision, curiosity, and imagination, very little is possible. The good news is that entrepreneurs/pioneers who dream do not suffer from that kind of close-minded malady.

 

[Born Again]

anyone surprised how poorly Health app has been implemented?

It's just there and not drawing people to it.

 

[jonnysods]

I hope they can detect melanoma. I had it when I was 19, go for checkups ever 3 months for the last 19 years, and am covered in so many atypical moles they don't even know what to do with me.

But I fear that this is pie in the sky.
[doublepost=1471878037][/doublepost]

anyone surprised how poorly Health app has been implemented?

It's just there and not drawing people to it.

I use it all the time, just as fitness and weight tracking. I'd like it to be more well rounded, but I don't want to spend my life tending to an app so it has all the info it needs.

 

[citysnaps]

anyone surprised how poorly Health app has been implemented?

It's just there and not drawing people to it.

I use it every day. Where does your data come from?

 

[Tech198]

if users like that then they like it

 

[blacktape242]

Apple is such a big hoarder

Case in point.....liquid metal....

 

[name99]

So all watch users will be walking around exhaling into their watch's build-it gas analyser app to see if they have lung cancer, yeah?

Do you honestly not have a damn clue what "Apple's HealthKit framework" means?
Right NOW every day I weight myself using a smart scale which reports the data, via Bluetooth and HealthKit, into my phone. This does NOT mean that I step on my phone so that it can weigh me!

What exactly do you imagine you are achieving through this willful pretense at misunderstanding?

 

[mtneer]

Why can't these companies spell their names correctly?

 

[Thunderhawks]

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.

That a very narrow viewpoint and ok, maybe you don't like TC, but he is convinced that it is possible.
So am I.
There are already isolated cases being reported, where animals can "sense" when their owners have cancer.
Would be good, if we can figure out why.

We are clearly talking about the future, not tomorrow with iOS 10.

If the terrorists don't wipe us out with nuclear weapons, humanity will see this.

When JFK said that we will land on the moon there were a lot of laughs and disbelievers, especially with the technology available than, which seems like shooting a tin can with a bb gun.

 

[name99]

anyone surprised how poorly Health app has been implemented?

It's just there and not drawing people to it.

You seem unable to distinguish between the HealhKit framework and the Health app. The Health app today is admittedly very bare bones, but the HealthKit framework is already in wide use as a way of sharing data between apps. I, for example, have data shared between my smart scale app, my food tracking app, my workouts app, and a third party app that summarizes all this data.

I'm guessing the main thing that Apple are going to do, based on this acquisition, is make Health.app more like a Health Diary, meaning that it will add a "shoebox app" interface --- a way to add (tagged with particular dates) freeform data including text, photos, scans, video, so that you can do things like scan your lab test results and add them into the data soup, or write down every day you experience a particular symptom.
They may (god I hope so) also become a little reasonable about allowing ways to share data OUT of Health.app. Right now the app is a black box. Developers have an API to extract data from the app, but there is no user-level sharing UI to allow you to easily information out of it --- basically if you want to provide data to your doctor or anyone else (wife, parents, etc) you're reduced to idiotic solutions like taking screen captures and emailing those.

 

[CreatorCode]

Why can't these companies spell their names correctly?

All the good names are taken.

The Gliimpse website is straight out of the random startup generator.

 

[62tele]

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.

Don't scoff too soon. About 20 years ago I was attending a Healthcare Executives conference and one of the featured speakers was a "futurist". He gave the example of using Star Trek Dr. Bones who could wan a device over a body and determine a diagnosis. Then he equated that to a CT, MRI and the recently introduced PET scanner. He asked, what is the difference in Bones small device and a large scanner? "Only the size" he answered himself. Then he spoke of the ever dwindling size of computers from main frames that consumed a whole room to PC's. Now the PC has been shrunk down to something pocket sized.
So who is to say that a "device" connected to an Apple (or other) device couldn't detect some forms of cancer within Cook's lifetime? Fully autonomous driving vehicles will be on public roads in the next 5 to 10 years.
It's not being gullible. It's being imaginative about the future of technology and the human spirit.