Digital-health

A recent Morgan Stanley report predicts a bright future for Apple in healthcare: strong growth, a leading role and new acquisitions.

The report, aimed at investors, estimates a growth from the current $15 billion to $313 billion in 2027.

Morgan Stanley expects sales of wearable devices to increase dramatically, with Apple already leading the way with the development of new sensors and features, a growing population of health-conscious consumers, and insurance and healthcare systems’ reimbursement policies for these devices.

The report then assumes that Apple could become the patient record registry in the United States, essentially becoming the national EHR. Hospitals no longer have to pay for accessing to multiple EHR systems at a local level; instead they could directly pay a single data aggregator for access to patient records across the country. There are already more than a hundred hospitals and health systems in the USA that, through the FHIR protocol, receive and transfer data from the Apple iOS medical records.

Apple could increase its partnerships with insurance and healthcare systems, such as Aetna and UnitedHealth, provide solutions to improve drug adherence, and develop its clinical trials business for the pharmaceutical industry.

Finally, the report mentions some possible next moves for the company, the most interesting of which are joining Haven, the Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway-JP Morgan joint venture, or acquiring a healthcare company — either a telehealth vendor or an EHR company.