Snapshot of the story: Apple will partner with the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the University of Michigan on the studies where they are looking to 'democratize' healthcare by allowing patients to contribute their data for research. 

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Why is it notable - A test of whether an everyday watch really helps monitor and manage health better

• Wide range of areas under the study proposal - from the impact of sound on health to heart rate and bodily movements, to menstrual tracking for risk assessment (of PCOS). The partnerships are also with reputable organisations. 
• Apple Heart Survey with Stanford University, which was launched in November 2017 attracted 400,000 participants. So, these could potentially be more insightful as they are more than surveys and we are two years ahead in a fast-paced tech age. 
• Inequitable methods? The Apple Watch is clearly not something everybody can afford, and there is already a selection bias as a result of the types of people whose data will be represented in the studies. 

Industry Implications - Digital Biomarkers come at a cost

• A bigger push on the use of wearables and passive monitoring to collect digital biomarkers and then use those effectively to inform care management. 
• It is unclear where these studies will lead and what types of recommendations will be made since they are observational (nothing wrong with that). 
• It may cost the health system much more money to have to follow up with patients notified of possible atrial fibrillation on their Apple Watches, or of risk of PCOS or infertility.

Snapshot of the story: Surescripts, an IT company that supports e-prescription, the electronic transmission of prescriptions between health care organizations and pharmacies, as well as general health information exchange of medical records, will terminate its partnership with ReMy Health, a third party that supplies PillPack with information about patient prescriptions. 

No one has yet to make these claims fully -- just a lot of back and forth right now, so, below are some educated guesses. 

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Why is it notable?

• If what Surescripts and others are suggesting is true, then this puts Pillpack on an off footing to get more patients onto their platform and they will likely lose ground. 
• PillPack will then have to collect 'patient-reported' medication history, and if such is the method of collection of this data, it could suffer from the same recollection bias that has traditionally been experienced by all clinicians. 
• It does, however, present an opportunity to partner directly with Surescripts and bypass any other smaller companies, thus resulting in a much larger collaboration. 

 Industry Implications -Patient data and market monopolization concerns need to be averted

• Potential blow up in the industry on patient data - Question on who can and cannot go after data and use it for their business. 
• Dynamics of competitive players could be unbalanced: Surescripts is owned by CVS and ExpressScripts, competitors to Pillpack. 
• Monopolization of the prescription market: Should PillPack also partner directly with Surescripts, which will give Surescripts a serious monopoly of the e-prescription market in the USA. 

‍Snapshot of the story: It's partnerships galore again, and this time, with Verily and iRhythm announcing the coming together of iRhythm’s expertise in AI-based arrhythmia diagnosis and Verily’s advanced health data analytics technologies to improve screening, diagnosis, and management of patients with A.fib.

‍Why is it notable - Digital health in cardiovascular disease gaining traction

• There seems to be a heavy focus on cardiovascular health as indicated by this partnership, and several other milestones including Apple's ECG monitor that we recently wrote about. 
• Evidence- based: iRhythm have released results of a study with their Zio Patch for A.Fib: monitored individuals, compared with non-monitored controls, had higher rates of AF diagnosis, greater initiation of anticoagulants.

 Industry Implications - Constant monitoring = Overdiagnosis? 

• Big opportunity in stratifying higher-risk patients and make a diagnosis faster with a device that is meant for medical research only versus a consumer-grade device that may not offer such granularity. 
• Increased health care resource utilization: while these remote interventions are very helpful at a patient level, it may result in greater utilization of hospitals, ERs, even for non-emergencies thus increasing the burden on the system. There's no right or wrong, but certainly something to think about.