The "Holy Grail" of Apple's Watch is its monitoring capabilities, now and in the future, and attaining deeper insight into the human body, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
That's why the wrist device is considered Apple's admission pass into the mHealth and healthcare marketplace, Cook said at the Startup Fest Europe conference in Amsterdam, Business Insider reports.
"The things that interest us the most are things where we can bring our ability to integrate hardware, software, services into something that's magical, and enriches people in some way," Cook said. "If you look at some of the things that do not drive revenue, but have massive interest in them from our teams, health is very much one of those."
His insight comes two months since the debut of Apple's third healthcare platform, CareKit, designed to help with mHealth app development and build off the foundation of its ResearchKit. A month after CareKit's debut, Apple made the platform available to the open source community Github, in a quest to drive faster development and new tools.
Health device monitoring is a prime vendor focus and it's no different for Apple, Cook added. Two years ago, Apple provided a peek into its healthcare sensor plans with patent filings. According to BI, the tech giant now is working on features for the Watch, such as a non-invasive glucometer.
"We believe that health is something that is a huge problem in the world, and we think it is ripe for simplicity and a new view, and we'd like to contribute to that," Cook said.
For more information:
- read the Business Insider article
- watch the full interview