New Delhi: Apple is reportedly working on a new health and wellness feature – an AI health coach – which might come next year. Let alone the health coaching, Apple is also working on tracking emotions and plans to bring the Health app to iPads.
The AI health coaching, codenamed Quartz, will use AI and data from Apple Watch to motivate users to exercise, help them sleep better, and improve their eating habits, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman citing people familiar with the project. Users will get suggestions and personal-tailored coaching programs, said the sources. The Quartz will be a standalone app, different from the existing Health app.
People from several groups at Apple, including health, Siri, and AI, and even folks from the services department are said to be working on the feature. Sources tell that the AI health coaching is planned to arrive next year, but there it could either be postponed or cancelled eventually.
The Quartz initiative by Apple draws similarities with LumiHealth, a program launched by Apple in collaboration with the Singapore government in 2020. However, while LumiHealth rewarded users for maintaining good health, Apple’s new in-house service will require a monthly fee like many of its other digital offerings.
Apple has plans to introduce a new version of its Health app specifically designed for iPad, which will allow users to view their electrocardiogram results and other health data in a more spacious format. The Health app for iPadOS 17 is scheduled to arrive later this year.
The Health app for iPhone (hopefully also iPad) will get tools for tracking emotions later this year. The early version of the emotion tracker will allow users to log their moods, answer questions about their day, and compare the results over time.
However, in the future, this could be enhanced to analyse a user’s speech, typed words, and other data on their devices to automatically determine their mood using the iPhone. Apple will also reportedly add a tool for managing vision conditions, such as nearsightedness, to the Health app.
According to sources, Apple’s upcoming journaling app will be distinct from its mood and emotion-tracking features and is not intended to be positioned as a health feature. Instead, the app will be an extension of Apple’s Find My service and other location features, focusing on adding social networking elements. Users can write journal entries about their activities, such as their daily walks to work, within the app.
Apple is also working on bringing blood pressure and non-invasive glucose monitoring to Apple Watch in the coming years. While the AI health coaching service is due for next year, the new iPad app and tools to manage emotion and vision could get a mention at this year’s annual developers conference in June.
