Apple is working on an AI-powered health coaching app

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Apple Inc. is working on an AI-powered health coaching service and new emotion-tracking technology, its latest attempt to lock in users with health and wellness features.

The new coaching service codenamed Quartz is designed to keep users motivated to exercise, improve eating habits and help them sleep better, according to people familiar with the project. The idea is to use artificial intelligence and data from an Apple Watch to make suggestions and tailor coaching programs to specific users, said the people, who asked not to be identified because initiatives have not yet been implemented. announce.

The move is part of a broader health push for the company, which has made such features central to its devices, especially the Apple Watch. Its latest efforts also include an expansion of the health app on the iPad and features that could help vision-impaired users.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the Cupertino, California-based company’s plans.

The Quartz initiative is reminiscent of LumiHealth, a wellness and coaching service Apple launched in partnership with the Singapore government in 2020. One difference is that the Singapore-based program could pay cash rewards to users who stayed healthy, while Apple’s new domestic service will carry a monthly fee like many of its other digital offerings. It will also be his app.

The service is scheduled for next year, but could eventually be canceled or postponed. The project is led by several Apple groups, including the healthcare, Siri and AI teams, as well as the services division.

In the near term, Apple plans to launch an iPad version of the iPhone health app for the first time. The change, which will allow users to see electrocardiogram results and other health data in a larger format, is expected to be included as part of iPadOS 17 later this year.

The hope is that an iPad version will boost the apps’ popularity in healthcare settings, where tablets have already made inroads. The app is central to the company’s healthcare efforts, serving as a repository for fitness data collected from the Apple Watch and external health records. It also acts as a portal for users to share information with their doctors.

Tools for monitoring emotions and managing vision conditions, such as nearsightedness, will be added to the health app this year. The initial version of the emotion tracker will allow users to record their mood, answer questions about the day and compare results over time. But in the future, Apple hopes the iPhone can use algorithms to determine users’ mood by their speech, what words they typed, and other data about their devices.

Apple plans to unveil the new iPad app and tools for managing emotion and vision at its annual global developer conference in June. But the coaching service, a more significant step, won’t be announced this year, according to People.

The company’s upcoming mixed reality headset, which will debut in June, will also play into the health and wellness strategy. A feature will allow users to meditate while wearing the device, and an optimized version of Apple’s Fitness+ training service is in the works.

The company’s health efforts began publicly in 2014 with the launch of a dedicated app and then rapidly expanded with the Apple Watch a year later. Healthcare strategy became key to the company, and Apple added new features for taking ECGs, atrial fibrillation analysis, fall detection, and sleep tracking. Work has become a major selling point for his smartwatch.

The mood and emotion tracking features are separate from a new journaling app that Apple is planning for this year. That app isn’t meant to be a health feature, the people said, and Apple is unlikely to position it as one.

Instead, the app is intended as an extension of the company’s Find My service and other location-based features. It was born out of a desire to add more social networking elements to those functions. Users could use the app to, for example, write a journal entry about their walk to work. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the journaling app.

Apple plans to extend the health push by bringing a basic form of blood pressure monitoring to its watch in the coming years, Bloomberg News reported. The feature likely won’t show exact diastolic and systolic numbers, but instead tell the Apple Watch wearer whether they might have high blood pressure. The user would then be directed to try a conventional blood pressure monitor or see a doctor.

Apple is also working on noninvasive glucose monitoring within a secret team dubbed the Exploratory Design Group. The technology, which would require a blood glucose reading using sensors rather than a finger prick, has been in development for more than a decade, and the company has made recent strides. He’s now working on shrinking the system down to an iPhone-sized device. The company is ultimately aiming to make the technology even smaller by packing the sensor into a future Apple Watch.

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