Apple's med tech hiring spree indicates enhanced wearable in the offing

A spree of hirings of experts in the field of medical and sensor technology by Apple over the past couple of years indicates their next wearable may feature significantly enhanced health monitoring abilities. With Apple betting big in the health monitoring space with their HealthKit platform that unites software developers and hardware manufacturers, the company is obviously serious about being the frontrunner in the wearable space, and so far as being the best devices for health tracking and monitoring of vital statistics.

Buzzfeed has noticed that Apple’s put out some job postings for people who know about biosensors and non-invasive measurements. Does that mean Apple is planning new products in the healthcare market? Yes. No. Maybe. (Pick one.)

CEO Tim Cook told the Telegraph late last year that he doesn’t want the Apple Watch to get so sophisticated that it draws the attention of the FDA because regulatory requirements would screw up his product cycles. He raised the possibility, though, that Apple might produce a regulated product that would connect to the Watch — one that might not be beholden to consumer electronic lifespans.

Because Apple is not in the MEMS sensor business and is unlikely to enter it, the biomedical engineers it’s hiring are most likely to do one of two things: help refine HealthKit/ResearchKit ecosystems, or help the hardware and software engineers understand the data that sensors generate. It’s becoming generally understood that the difference between an accurate device and an inaccurate one isn’t so much the sensor as the software around it, and understanding how the sensor output reflects the real world is key.

A new product? A better product? Infrastructure work, or R&D? Take a guess; it’s probably all of the above. But it’s clear that Apple’s interest in digital health continues unabated.

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