Decision To Omit Health Sensors From Apple Watch Likely Relief to Medical Device Makers
Apple’s decision to scale back on the number of health sensors originally planned for the Apple Watch is likely cause for relief among consumer health device makers, Parks Associates analyst Harry Wang said in a blog post. Wang cited a…
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Wall Street Journal ​story Tuesday that said efforts to integrate multiple health sensors to detect functions including blood pressure, skin perspiration and heart activity were scrapped for reasons including reliability, complexity and required regulatory oversight. The news is likely “welcoming” to health device makers “nervously watching and waiting for the Apple Watch’s impact to unfold,” Wang said. He compared the arrival of the Apple Watch to the iPhone that has “rendered so many single-functional device categories into obsolescence and left many traditional consumer brands in shackles.” Sources in the medical field have feared that the arrival of the Apple Watch will “kick off the era of multi-sensor health monitoring design” and a subsequent consolidation of brands that manufacture single-function ECG meters, blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters, Wang said. Health device makers were “excited about the prospects” of increased visibility that Apple Watch could bring for the various tools available for health monitoring on one hand, but also concerned that “less sophisticated” technologies could confuse consumers with “poorly collected data and attract unwanted regulatory scrutiny to this market” on the other, Wang said. The analyst applauded Apple for “following its principle of not bringing inferior user experience to the market.” He said the decision illustrates that the health monitoring technology “still has frontiers to conquer,” since a company like Apple was challenged to deliver a “perfect 10” experience to the market. Apple representatives didn't comment.