You are currently viewing SemiWiki as a guest which gives you limited access to the site. To view blog comments and experience other SemiWiki features you must be a registered member. Registration is fast, simple, and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
Apple already dominates the cell phone market in profits by a wide margin. The next step will be to take advantage of their phone's ecosystems stability, intuitiveness and sophistication to build large and sophisticated platforms. Medical provides the perfect platform for it's universal and international. It takes full advantage of the existing camera, processor, memory, communications and above all security. Apple has the ideal existing foundation and resources to build this platform with the will to do it as Tim Cook has stated in many interviews. This is one of the few platforms that is large enough to have substantial impact on the world's largest company. With the US spending nearly twenty percent of its GDP on medical and being Apple's home country this is the logical place to start. With medical costs becoming a major problem for the US, this will also be able to fulfill Tim Cooks and Apples mission to make the world a better place. It also is a market that few have the resources and reach to penetrate rapidly and world wide, providing Apple with a business with a wide moat. Apple literally has the muscle to overcome the entrenched special interests that have made US medical 37th in quality at the world's highest cost. I can see the day when the Apple medical platform is not only used passively for monitoring, but using active controls and devices to not only treat conditions, but actually augment and improve our health. Apple already has an ideal partner in the semiconductor end of this with TSMC. Both TSMC and Apple know how to work with others and to everyone's benefit. I feel the next platform Apple might tackle will be education. I hope this happens soon for medical is the current greatest threat to the US economy.
'
Arthur, just as Apple didn't invent the smartphone, it didn't invent the mobile medical platform. I concede their walled garden has extracted massive profits from the smartphone ecosystem, through exceptional marketing, high pricing, and impressive margins, and they will likewise try to extract what they can from medical applications, but they are neither the technological pioneer nor alone in this space. You might want to look at QualcommLife, for example.Their open, vendor neutral platform already includes a vast ecosystem, including such partners as Walgreens, United Heathcare, Novartis, Medtronic, the American Heart Association, and the American Telemedicine Association. And there are many others with IP and designs on that business.
Jeffrey, I agree with everything you say, but it will take a company with size, influence and finances of Apple to overturn the mess that US medical has become and Qualcomm isn't even in the ball park, let alone come close. I see only two companies that would even stand a chance and that's Apple and Alphabet. The companies you mentioned although they have good technology are part of the problem and not the solution. This is not to say Apple or Alphabet could go down the same corrupt road, but they have the power and heft to actually change things for the better.
I don't think any mobile medical platform can be successful without involving healthcare providers, medical device makers, pharmaceutical companies,and others in the incumbent sector as partners. The healthcare sector will not go the way of buggy whip manufacturers. Rather, they must be eager participants in the evolution of black and white to color TV, by analogy.
They won't be eager participants for the system is a total failure from an economic point of view to the point it threatens to collapse the US. The Pentagon has ruled debt is the biggest threat to the US and just Medicare debt is 27 trillion and climbing fast. Medical at almost 20% of GDP and climbing for 37th in quality signifies just how broken the system is. The time for casual reform is long past and we must have radical change or even an outright revolution in the medical system if the US is going to survive in any form close to what it is now. The incumbents have proven they are part of the problem and not the solution. This includes the tort/legal system where many times it is as much a lottery as it is about law and justice. Ultimately you have a very valid point, they will have to persuaded to change by being made to realize they can either be part of the solution through radical change or go the way of many obsolete business models and die. Evolution in business is a choice between changing or dying, and sometimes the choice is made for you, like pay phones, VCRs and full service gas stations.
I don't think any mobile medical platform can be successful without involving healthcare providers, medical device makers, pharmaceutical companies,and others in the incumbent sector as partners....
Apple's partnership/cooperation news with medical groups is reported on an almost weekly basis.
I believe Apple is attacking the medical problem in full partnership with and service to the medical sector. Aside from reports pointing to cooperation, Steve Jobs taught Apple that Apple's Go To Market Strategy is paramount for powerful innovation.
A successful Go To Market for the medical sector, as you've pointed out, absolutely requires innovation, coordination, cooperation, and buy-in from many stake holders and Apple's Tim Cook has demonstrated that he has this understanding in his bones.
pk, The other players are being forced to change by the market, for if they don't, they will be mowed down by a coming technological wave that will render the old way of doing things, obsolete, ineffective, inefficient, costly delivering totally inferior results. AI, AR, robotics, remote medicine, implanted semis/sensors/mems will render the old order totally obsolete. The only alternative is a wholesale bankruptcy of the US economy.
The medical market isn't subject to the same competitive forces as electronics. You have regulators, insurance companies, hospitals, pharmacies, it's a totally different ecosystem. I don't think a tech company can blindly come in and expect to change it all without working with the stakeholders involved, even if they have a great product.
count, no but bankruptcy will. Medical costs are devastating everything from family budgets to the national budget. You are definitely right about special interests controlling medical. Corruption follows money and with medical taking almost 20% of US GDP, it dwarfs every other area of the economy and as such is the most corrupt. Even the military only takes around 5% of GDP for reference. Medical is ripe for efficiency improvements is almost every area. It has to also have penalties for people that deliberately abuse themselves, just like drunk and reckless drivers pay far more for auto insurance or lose their licenses and right to drive.
