The acquisition was first reported by Fast Company. Apple completed the purchase earlier this year but hasn’t publicly acknowledged it until now. This week, it confirmed that Gliimpse is part of Apple, without revealing why it made the purchase or the technology that Gliimpse is working on within Apple.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company told Fast Company.
Gliimpse is a Silicon Valley-based personal health data platform aimed at an American audience. Founded in 2013, it allows you to collate and share a personal health record that’s stored online. You can personalise your data, save recent medical results and share your profile with medical workers.
According to co-founder Anil Sethi, Gliimpse was created out of a need for an easier way to store and manage personal health data. After helping his sister through treatment for breast cancer, Sethi realised that healthcare creates a trail of medical data wherever you go. That data, despite being highly personal, isn’t usually directly available to you, however.
Sethil noted that Obamacare has had an impact on this by forcing physicians and hospitals to make data available. However, his LinkedIn profile points out that a myriad of different file formats are used across over a thousand IT systems. Sethil wanted an “Electronic Health Record” that’s open both to the user and medical staff. He set out to create it, building Gliimpse.
In many ways, Gliimpse is similar to Apple’s existing work in the digital health sector. Through apps like Apple Health, HealthKit, CareKit and ResearchKit, Apple is already allowing any iPhone user to build and share their own medical profile. Doctors can connect directly with patients through Apple’s apps, enabling them to keep an eye on the data without calling the patient in for an appointment.
Fast Company noted that Gliimpse stands out in Apple’s portfolio because of its focus on chronic conditions, including cancer and diabetes. It comes shortly after Apple hired a top pediatric endocrinologist who developed an app for teenagers with Type 1 diabetes, using its HealthKit platform. The company appears to be planning to build applications that can better cater to the especially challenging requirements of patients with complex conditions, diversifying its collection of healthcare services and allowing it to help more people.
Apple is widely expected to use the Apple Watch 2 to take its next steps into the healthcare market. The upcoming version of the wearable will launch later this year, according to a recent report. It is expected to include a wider range of sensors than the current model, allowing users to collect more health data that can be stored in their Apple Health profile and securely shared with their doctor.
The current Apple Watch is more aimed at tracking fitness levels, such as daily step counts, floor climbs and calorie burns than medical-grade health data. Over the past couple of years, Apple has indicated it values the opportunity of being able to give people control of their medical data, however. Providing people with a compact tracking device to wear on their wrist would go some way to achieving that aim.
Apple has not disclosed how much its acquisition of Gliimpse has been valued at. There is currently nothing about the deal on either the Gliimpse website or on the LinkedIn pages of co-founders Anil Sethi and Karthik Hariharan.
