Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has always said that among the company’s most significant contributions to society will be improving healthcare. And rightly so, under his reign, Apple has made immense progress in the healthcare space.
Now, with the company’s rejuvenated push into artificial intelligence and AI agents, Apple is combining these interests to redesign and rethink the way that consumers approach their healthcare needs.
Pundits are speculating that all of this work has been encompassed in a secretive initiative code-named Project Mulberry.
Project Mulberry will aim to completely redesign the existing Apple Health app and ecosystem. Notably, the company has years of consumer data that can leveraged for large language model and AI agent training. One significant source has been its immense success with the Apple Watch, which hundreds of millions of individuals around the world use today to track their daily activities, health metrics, sleep patterns and other general constitutional parameters. With this data, Apple has a massive repository with which it can build an entire ecosystem to provide curated coaching and tailored health services for users, which apparently will be one key initiative of Mulberry.
Furthermore, the project may also entail devising more advanced and intuitive food tracking features to help users manage diets and daily caloric intake. This has been another big push by the healthcare industry in recent years, which has given rise to popular applications such as MyFitnessPal and LoseIt! One key reason that these have been immensely successful: consumers worldwide are increasingly realizing the importance of a well managed diet and its key to longevity and better health outcomes. These applications allow users to scan food in front of them and track caloric intake, ensuring that they achieve their daily macronutrient and dietary goals. Apple aims to make this process even easier for millions of iOS users by seamlessly integrating this feature into its ecosystem.
On the hardware front, there has been a significant push by consumers for more personalized and curated health devices. This is where Apple Watch shines, especially given its significant work in detecting falls, arrhythmias and even sleep patterns. The whole concept has actually given rise to a massive industry for consumer wearables. For example, Google has made incredible progress with its Fitbit device, which stands to be one of the most widely used fitness trackers in the world. Other companies are innovating in novel ways; for example, Oura has developed a smart ring which can help track 20+ biometrics, including a user’s sleep patterns. Beyond the watch, Apple has reportedly been working on other wearables as well; most noteworthy is its work on a no-prick blood glucose monitor, which could one day potentially aid the nearly 830 million people globally that have diabetes.
Project Mulberry will need to go one step further in conjunction with the company’s latest work with Apple Intelligence and AI. Through this, it’s very likely that Apple will start integrating other apps in its wider iOS ecosystem into its healthcare sphere to provide users a more holistic and broader suite of “lifestyle” choices. For example, delivery apps may become useful for things like medication pick-ups and may lead to better adherence; rideshare applications may become critical for users to reach and access care; the camera and augmented reality functions may enable new ways for health coaches to interact with users to promote more realistic coaching sessions, video tutorials and tailoerd workouts. The possibilities are endless, given just how wide Apple’s reach is.
Project Mulberry is not expected to go live for at least another year, by most accounts; given just how significant this work is and Apple’s steadfast commitment to launch initiatives when they are “just right,” the company will surely take its time before this is considered ready.
