Apple Confirms Acquisition Of 'Gliimpse': The AI Med-Tech Startup Set Up By Indian Entrepreneurs

First Posted: Aug 24, 2016 05:05 AM EDT
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The Silicon Valley-based start-up takes a patient's medical records and uses coding to produce a personalized, shareable electronic health record. The company was founded in 2013 by one-time Apple employee and serial entrepreneur Anil Sethi and IIT Chennai graduate Karthik Hariharan.

Apple has confirmed its acquisition of 'Gliimpse', a personal health data start-up that translates medical records in actionable data, , according to a report from the Fast Company. The report states that the deal went through earlier this year. The company has now confirmed the purchase, saying: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Why did Apple buy Gliimpse?

It's unclear at this point what Apple might have planned for Gliimpse. Apple could be eyeing other ways to expand into health with its Health Kit service, which provides a framework for app developers to gather more individual health data.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has talked in great detail of late about his belief that Apple could make its presence felt in the healthcare industry.

"We've gotten into the health arena and we started looking at wellness, that took us to pulling a string to thinking about research, pulling that string a little further took us to some patient-care stuff, and that pulled a string that's taking us into some other stuff," Cook says about Apple's healthcare ambitions in a recent interview, reports Fortune.

It's unlikely that this acquisition will bring Apple's health technologies under the purview of federal regulators. CEO Tim Cook recently told Fast Company that when you care less about reimbursements, then the smartphone market would "look small." Meanwhile, on his LinkedIn page, Sethi states: "We enable patients to collect their lifelong history, so they can share it with their care network - physicians, friends and family." It's hard to tell how Apple will use the technology from here on. In previous cases, usually, the technology Apple, Inc. has acquired from another company often ends up looking very different when it finally makes them into an Apple product.

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