Macworld
Having revolutionized the computing, music, phone, and gaming industries across a quarter-century of dazzling innovation, Apple is turning its attention to the far more important healthcare sector. And AI is a big part of the company’s plan.
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman does a deep dive into a major project at Cupertino which is known internally by the codename “Mulberry.” Intended to culminate in another subscription service, likely branded as Health+, this project will see the Health app completely revamped and given a new AI-powered “health coach” feature.
The AI element would, Gurman writes, “replicate—at least to some extent—a real doctor,” which is likely to set off alarm bells with those who have struggled with Apple Intelligence. The company’s AI system has been dogged by problems since it launched last year, and while such teething pains might not be disastrous when a feature is trying to summarize app notifications, the prospect of a misfiring AI giving unreliable health advice is deeply troubling.
If you’re thinking that you will soon be able to speak to an AI doctor on your iPhone, however, that might not be quite how the service plays out. The idea is that the Health app collects data from your iPhone, Apple Watch, and any other Apple or compatible products capable of monitoring health information, much as it does at present. The difference is that an AI coach will interpret that information to offer health advice tailored to your body, circumstances, and needs. That AI coach is currently being trained using “data from physicians that [Apple] has on staff,” Gurman reports. Let’s hope the training is more thorough than the regimen that Genmoji went through.
You may see the faces of doctors on screen, but these will be real, flesh-and-blood medics rather than AI-generated ones. Apple is recruiting healthcare professionals, “including experts in sleep, nutrition, physical therapy, mental health and cardiology,” to make a series of videos that will serve as explainers. If Health decides, based on your data, that you need to make changes to your diet, for example, you might then be shown a video about food tracking or getting more fresh vegetables.
One of the medical recruits, someone Gurman describes as a “major doctor personality” will be chosen to be the face of the service and its de facto host. Which makes sense from a marketing and interactivity point of view. But one would hope that Apple’s real priorities are on the medical side of things rather than the presentation.
The project is expected to come to fruition as part of the iOS 19.4 software in the spring or summer of 2026. Apple is expected to unveil iOS 19 at its WWDC keynote on June 9, so we may learn more about the feature soon.
Source : Macworld
