It’s been reported by ‘Fast Company’ that Apple has acquired ‘Gliimpse’ – a health startup company, aiming to create personalised and sharable medical records. Apparently the acquisition took place earlier this year, and although it hasn’t yet been reported on the Gliimpse website, ‘Fast Company’ have reported that Apple has more or less confirmed the acquisition in a statement made to them. This is a potentially ground braking partnership as to date, there is no single electronic health record that all physicians use. Perhaps even more shocking, there isn’t even a common file format across more than 1000 different systems! So, could all this be set to change with Apples’ acquisition of Gliimpse?
Firstly. lets look a little closer at what Gliimpse is all about… The founder of Gliimpse, ‘Anil Sethi’, started working as an Apple engineer in the late 80s. Sethi also founded, and sold, a company named “Sequoia Software” in a cash transaction around $180 million!! In addition, he has founded a number of health tech startups, including Xlipstream and Pinch Bio, before founding Gliimpse.
Now, here’s how Glimpse works… You, the user, can input your health data into Gliimpse, therefore storing all your health data in one virtual space. It allows you the ability to download documents as well as upload photos to your profile – depending on how comprehensive you would like your profile to be. Some of you may be worried about who else sees all of this health data that you’re storing? But I think you’ll be happy with the answer: Gliimpse doesn’t see your data. No one does. Unless you would like them to, and in which case you have the ability to share information with whomever you desire. Gliimpse are adamant that their technology merely gathers your records, processes the data and continues to build your Gliimpse profile. Therefore making it a safe, secure and private virtual space for all your medical data.
In terms of Apple’s acquisition of Gliimpse, I don’t think it’s a surprise move as Apple have really been focusing in on their health-related software over the past few years: HealthKit, ResearchKit, and CareKit. But with this noted acquisition, the already highly impressive Health App for iOS will become even more valuable. The question many people are interested in though, is “how” apple will integrate Gliimpse into their products and will they look to make any changes to what Gliimpse already offers? Watch this space!
