The Singapore government has started a collaboration with Apple to encourage the adoption of healthier lifestyles and preventive measures. The Health Promotion Council (HPB), which depends on the Singapore Ministry of Health, has developed an app called LumiHealth with the US company, which can be used by all iPhone owners who use an Apple Watch. The project is the first of its kind to cover an entire nation, albeit a city-state of 5.5 million inhabitants, and is seen as a foretaste of plans by Apple and other major tech companies in the health and health insurance sector.
According to the rankings of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international institutions, Singapore has one of the best health systems in the world, organized in a mixed form between public and private. The public part covers all the major expenses related to hospital admissions and numerous therapies, while a mixed system is envisaged for minor examinations and visits, with the payment of some premiums to private insurance companies.
The new application will be free and available in Singapore starting from the first days of October. Its development took place with the collaboration of Apple, which just yesterday announced a new version of its smartwatches capable of detecting the level of oxygen in the wearer's blood, in addition to a previous function that allows you to perform an electrocardiogram. In addition to collecting this type of data, Apple Watches keep track of physical activity and give the possibility to enter goals to make more movement.
LumiHealth will do something similar, but is designed to offer specific information about Singapore and the major health issues affecting its population. In addition to providing information and advice to prevent various diseases, the application contains a section to encourage the adoption of healthier habits and lifestyles, through the achievement of various types of goals. The choice of objectives is done through a virtual assistant and is presented as a game, in which you can challenge other users and win prizes, not only symbolic.
The HPB has in fact allocated funds to offer up to 380 Singapore dollars (about 240 euros) to LumiHealth users who will overcome the challenges and achieve particular objectives. The prizes – which can be redeemed in the form of vouchers to be spent in some chain stores – are cumulative for the two-year duration of the program. The competitions will be divided by age, gender and physical form, in order to make the challenges more equitable between the participants.
The presence of cash prizes should encourage the installation of LumiHealth by a significant number of people, local health authorities confide. In Singapore, about a third of smartphones are iPhones, according to the most recent surveys, and this should reflect positively on the number of participants in the initiative. If the maximum amount is collected, each user could also pay for themselves the purchase of a basic version of Apple Watch.
LumiHealth can be used by anyone over the age of 17 and in possession of a SingPass, more or less the equivalent of our SPID, to have access to public administration services. The data collected may be shared with the health authorities only with the explicit consent of the users. Information on habits and lifestyles should help HPB understand where to take action to improve prevention.
The initiative has received some criticism for having been developed with Apple and therefore not making it possible to use other devices, such as Android smartphones and smartwatches and personal trackers of other companies. The Singapore government explained that it chose Apple because of the quantity and quality of data that can be obtained from Apple Watches, but that extensions of the initiative are planned to allow the use of other devices in the future.
For Apple, the Singapore initiative will be useful in evaluating the opportunities given in the health and prevention sectors by its smartwatches, in view of the activation of similar programs in other countries, not necessarily with health systems. In the United States, where healthcare is mostly private, Apple has already started collaborations with some large health insurers, but has not yet offered specific products and services.
It is widely believed among observers and analysts that the next big area of interest for US technology companies is healthcare. Apple has a significant advantage over the competition in terms of systems for detecting data, thanks to the numerous sensors of its Apple Watches (used in various scientific researches), but other companies such as Google and Amazon could catch up, and quickly.
Alphabet, the holding company that controls Google, launched last year the acquisition of Fitbit, a company specializing in the production of trackers to monitor physical activity and health conditions. Amazon recently announced a new tracker dedicated to health and offering information to encourage healthier lifestyles. According to analysts, both companies will leverage these products to provide innovative services related to health insurance in the United States, such as the ability to pay insurance premiums of varying amounts depending on how virtuous everyone is in preventing and taking care of themselves.
Apple is oriented to do something similar, but has set up its services by focusing a lot on communication of privacy protection, which could be an advantage in a delicate area such as that of collecting data on one's health. The program launched in Singapore is no exception, and is seen as a first experiment in the convergence of large technology companies, individual health and health systems management.
