and backend tools that it could then pass off to health organizations to use. Apple is good at consumer tech — delivering care itself might not be its approach, but smartwatch features and easy-to-use personal health records are more in its zone. “It makes more sense that the inroads they make is bringing their particular expertise in a way that they can only do because of their scale,” Keller says.
Tech expertise was never going to be a magic cure-all to the many, many problems plaguing the American healthcare system. It’s an unwieldy, inequitable, tentacled beast held together by fax machines and taken to its breaking point by the pandemic. The early failures and growing pains weren’t a surprise to people who work in healthcare and understand its sheer complexity.
Finding it, though, doesn’t guarantee success, and only time will tell if these companies are able to make the types of big changes to the areas they target — again, healthcare is hard. But if they’re able to figure out ways to map the things they’re already good at onto health products, they might find a path forward. “If they’re not, it’s gonna lead to failure,” Keller says.Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.
Two things are critical for healthcare technology: openness and security. Open to work with other systems, in a secure way. We hope to see more progress in this space — and we see Cloud is playing its role in this progress.