Tech giant Apple is working towards a bigger push into the health sector with some new services for consumers. The latest edition of its pioneering health-oriented smartwatch, namely the Apple Watch Series 8 was released in September 2022. It featured a new temperature sensor to track the user"s period cycle. The watchOS 9.4 brought A-Fib to more regions and improved cycle tracking.
Now, Apple is working on its latest service, codenamed Quartz. It is an AI-powered health coaching service, aiming to track emotions. This feature is reportedly planned to be released with iPadOS 17 and iOS 17. Quartz can help users track their exercise, eating, and sleeping habits. This may motivate users to improve their habits and daily lifestyle. Empowering these data with AI can help generate personalized health solutions. This may attract more users to the paid-only service.
Apple worked on a similar service earlier with the Singaporean government called LumiHealth. The big difference being Quartz is a paid service and the latter is free of charge. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. Apple plans to expand its health products and service to more of its devices by introducing the health app for the first time to iPads. Initially, the mood data will be manually entered by users, but Apple ultimately plans to evaluate mood conditions by tracking user typing, speech, and other data on the devices they use. This can be of serious privacy concern to users.
Apple is hoping the iPhone could use algorithms to determine a user’s mood via their speech, what words they’ve typed and other data on their devices.
Besides tracking emotions, Apple is bringing a vision condition management feature and working on noninvasive glucose monitoring. This technology will enable diabetic patients to passively monitor their glucose levels throughout the day without finger pricking. You can learn more here.