Tech giant Apple is moving further to expand its health sector, and it has made its first ever acquisition—personal health data startup Gliimpse. According to media reports, the acquisition reportedly happened earlier but was not publicly announced yet.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
-Apple spokesperson
What is Gliimpse?
Gliimpse was founded in 2013 by Anil Sethi and Karthik Hariharan, Gliimpse provides a secure platform where consumers can manage and share their medical records and info. According to Sethi’s LinkedIn page, Gliimpse — like many startups — was born of a personal need. Gliimpse translates medical records into data that doctors can take action on. The startup enables consumers to create a medical history that can be shared with their care network- doctors, friends and family.
“As a consumer of healthcare, I leave behind a bread-crumb-trail of medical info wherever I’ve been seen. But, I’m unable to easily access or share my own data. Obamacare is one of several forcing functions federally mandating physicians and hospitals give us our data: meds, labs, allergies. However, there’s no single Electronic Health Record that all physicians use, sigh. Worse, there isn’t even a common file format across a 1000+ systems.”
-Anil Sethi on his LinkedIn Page
How can Apple benefit from this acquisition?
In recent months, Apple has acquired HealthKit, CareKit and ResearchKit startups that allow patients, doctors and researchers to access important health and wellness data via a range of mobile devices. Apple has also released its HealthKit app which helps users monitor personal health and fitness data on iPhone 6. Gliimpse collects data from medical portals and combine them with self-entered data as well data from devices, all without any sort of human intervention. This ideology is in perfect sync with Tim Cook’s vision of Apple entering the consumer segment of the $9 trillion healthcare industry.
Apple is working with a lot of other startups in the medical field, so it can make a major impact on global healthcare. Needless to say. the acquisition of Gliimpse is aimed at upping Apple’s efforts in digital health.
