Ask HN: When will Apple's iDoctor app come out? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: When will Apple's iDoctor app come out?

Imagine if Apple created a blood pressure monitor, eye exam device, sugar level monitor, and whole sorts of devices that you can connect to your iPhone, and an app called iDoctor would evaluate the results on the device, eliminating the need to go to your primary doctor for preliminary tests. They can even use the iPhone camera to diagnose some diseases (obviously you would need a specialist to confirm this), but wouldn't this add more value to Apple as a company?

Sure, they would have to lobby hard in Congress to overcome the American Medical Association (AMA), but I think Apple could pull this off.

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> When will Apple's iDoctor app come out?

You mean the app you just imagined yourself? Hard to say.

It is not just my imagination. If you follow the features that Apple is adding to their watches, you realize my predictions aren't that far off. Apple will do it inch-by-inch, though. They won't declare this app at once, but rather they would add each medical assistance feature one by one

Oh ok sorry I didn’t realize.

I’d bet iDoctor comes out next week.

Why would they need to overcome the AMA? The AMA has no input on drugs or medical devices. That is the domain of the FDA.

Apple would need to go through the same rigorous submission process that any medical device manufacture would need to go through.

Nothing else you mentioned is new or novel.

This would actually be a revolutionary idea. Imagine the iPhone becoming your primary doctor, eliminating the need for traditional visits. This has never happened before. Have a fever? Use this digital thermometer to measure your body temperature. Discolored urine? Open the camera, and iDoctor will evaluate its healthiness. If not, you can use another device that analyzes samples to identify the cause.

Essentially, the iPhone would be the central processing unit for all your potential health concerns. If the app determines a probability of a specific disease, it would recommend a relevant specialist.

This could eliminate the need for a traditional primary doctor, their assistants, and the associated overhead, saving money for both patients and insurance companies. Instead of paying for both a primary doctor and a specialist, they would only pay for this app and a specialist visit when necessary.

> Imagine the iPhone becoming your primary doctor, eliminating the need for traditional visits.

You seem to be under the misguided impression that the only purpose of visiting a doctor is for laboratory-based diagnostic tests.

> If not, you can use another device that analyzes samples to identify the cause.

So much for that silly "iDoctor" idea Apple failed to try at!

> This would actually be a revolutionary idea.

No, it wouldn’t be. The idea is at least over half a century old (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder)

Executing upon that idea and actually building it would be revolutionary even if that meant building a single one at the cost of a trillion dollars.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we can even put all the necessary sensors in a device that size, let alone power them there and turn their measurements into a diagnosis or, better, treatment plan.

An iPhone cannot remotely reliably count how many steps I set in a day, heart rate measurement in an iWatch doesn’t work well during exercise, non-invasive blood glucose monitoring is a research project, etc.

Because of that, I think that replacing primary care doctors by some magical device will mean heavily increasing the load on secondary care workers because the number of false positives would go up tremendously. Net effect would be higher healthcare costs.

Let me clarify. The heavy lifting wouldn't be done by the iPhone itself, but by connected devices, similar to how you print a document using a Bluetooth printer connected to your iPhone.

Imagine having all the necessary medical equipment at home, compatible with your iPhone. Instead of a doctor taking your temperature, weight, and asking general health questions, these devices would perform those tasks. Each device would analyze the data and send the results to your iPhone, just like a digital thermometer transmits data to a computer in a doctor's office.

You might be thinking of the iPhone as a standalone doctor, but that's not the concept. Instead, the iDoctor app would delegate tasks to different devices, each acting like a mini-server.

Similar to how Amazon Alexa works with smart light bulbs, these devices would connect to your iPhone's iDoctor app for diagnosis. The app could then analyze the data and suggest if a specialist visit is necessary, potentially saving you a trip to the doctor's office.

In essence, the iDoctor app would leverage connected devices for diagnosis, with the iPhone acting as a central hub for data collection and analysis.

I don’t think this type of idea will eliminate the need for primary care, but it will flag risks for people who don’t regularly go to the doctor for routine visits.

You should ask The Dropout how she went about it.

Personally I wouldn't want over priced medical devices.

It won't be a medical device only, it is a medical device and reading, interpreting the results like a doctor and giving you a meaningful answer.

Something that is capable of obtaining samples, testing and interpreting them, and providing meaningful answers is going to be expensive enough without an apple tax on top.

check out the contactless vital sign sensors from NorbertHealth.com that has SpO2, BP, PRV, temp, etc.

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