Report: Apple Acquires Personal Health Data Start-Up Gliimpse
Apple is making moves in the health sector.
According to Fast Company, Cupertino has acquired Gliimpse, a Silicon Valley-based personal health data start-up. The acquisition reportedly went down earlier this year, but is just coming to light now.
Apple did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment, but gave Fast Company its boilerplate statement ("Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans"). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Gliimpse first launched its personal health data platform in beta in October. According to an announcement at the time, the platform lets users "collect, personalize, and share a picture of their health data" — moving it from "siloed patient portals to a personalized longitudinal health profile." The idea is to give users a greater sense of "ownership around their health, with the ability to combine fragmented health data from disparate clinical systems and personalize their health profile."
Once combined, users can search their data and graph trends. The Gliimpse team also envisions this platform helping researchers by letting them search across "anonymously donated profile" for health insights.
"Founded on a single core notion, Gliimpse believes that everyone should be able to collect and securely share their personalized health data with whomever they trust — all 317 million U.S. citizens," the company wrote.
As Fast Company reports, it's unclear at this point what Apple plans to do with Gliimpse. Apple in recent years has launched a number of health-related software tools, including HealthKit, CareKit, and ResearchKit, not to mention its Health app on iOS.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.