Apple has recently made some bold moves in healthcare – including last month’s provisional launch of a new product letting iPhone users share electronic health records with hospitals. The trend been hailed by an analyst who thinks Apple will succeed where other tech giants have failed.
In an article on the CNBC website, Steve Kraus, a health investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, has declared his belief that “when we look back on this moment a decade from now, it will be viewed as a landmark day in the history of this still-nascent healthcare IT market.”
Kraus points out that, when Microsoft and Google tried encouraging consumers to digitally compile personal health records ten years ago, there was too little of the infrastructure necessary for sparking adoption. In 2007, under a third of healthcare providers had an electronic medical record.
However, two years later, the HITECH Act was passed; it has since ushered in broad adoption of EMRs. Furthermore, a lack of interoperability standards seriously hindered efforts to share health data between healthcare providers and patients.
However, given the significant regularity of iPhone use, not to Apple’s consumer-centric approach, Kraus believes that previous obstacles to a healthcare tech revolution have been lifted. Consumers should also increasingly use personal health data to inform their decisions about health plans, he adds.
In a concluding paragraph, Kraus observes that “we as consumers use our phones to purchase many things in our life but almost nothing when it comes to healthcare. With the arrival of Apple on the scene, I believe this will finally change.”
