| |  By Casey Ross, Katie Palmer, Mario Aguilar, and Mohana Ravindranath | | | Apple opens 2022 talking about its health efforts If you’re to believe the marketing, the Apple Watch could save your life. That message, which has been hammered in commercials for years, was reiterated by CEO Tim Cook during last week’s earnings call. “Nearly every day, I get notes from customers who share how a heart alert led to a life-saving appointment with the cardiologist,” he said, adding: “As I've said, we're still in the early innings with our health work, but every day, I am encouraged by our positive impact.”
“Early innings” is the tech world’s favored euphemism for “we haven’t totally figured this out yet,” and indeed, despite selling millions of watches that prominently feature health monitoring, it’s hard to point the company’s broad impacts on health outside of isolated anecdotes. Apple’s research projects may begin to provide more insights. Apple provided an update to reporters on the Heart and Movement Study conducted in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the American Heart Association, which has more than 100,000 Apple Watch users as participants. The findings so far — like that people over 65 were more likely to hit 150 minutes of weekly activity than younger people — are underwhelming. What, exactly, is the takeaway for health care?
Brigham and Women’s Calum MacRae, the lead researcher, said that three publications are in the works, with one possibly landing in a few weeks or months — we’ll be watching for real insights. In the world of health care, data reigns supreme, but the quest for rigorous quantification may be selling Apple’s efforts — which have increased awareness of health issues and demystified tech like ECGs — somewhat short.
And for those keeping tabs on numbers: Apple posted its highest-ever quarterly earnings. | Broadband’s still a major telehealth barrier. Insurers are stepping up  Nearly a quarter of people in the U.S. don’t have high-speed internet sufficient for video-calls at home — a major barrier to accessing comprehensive virtual care. And health plans are starting to pay attention, exploring ways to pay not just for virtual visits, but also for the underlying connectivity. "All of the potential good things that come from this move to virtual care are put at risk if we don't solve this broadband problem,” Abner Mason, founder and CEO of SameSky Health, told Katie. Still, subsidies can’t do much to help people who live in broadband dead-zones. Katie has the full story. | How to implement digital health tools Digital health tools that can help improve patient outcomes or streamline operations have tremendous potential, but they won’t help anyone if complex health systems can’t manage to use them. In a new paper, leaders at four large organizations — B righam and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Atrium Health, and Intermountain Healthcare — propose nine dimensions health systems might use to evaluate digital health tools. The authors write that leaders might consider whether to purchase or build tools, to think about potential return-on-investment, to assess what data tools will require, and to weigh how clinicians and executives might champion products. | The Exhaustion Epidemic: Examining the Covid-19 Burnout Crisis in Health Care Join STAT on Feb. 7 to discuss the solutions needed to support and retain health care workers experiencing burnout at unprecedented levels. Register here. | FDA looks back on 2021 digital health milestones In what was likely the busiest year in its four-decade history, the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health devoted more than half its staff to pandemic response and granted emergency use authorization to thousands of medical devices focused on Covid-19. It’s those efforts that increased access to PPE, over-the counter diagnostic tests, and ventilators, director Jeff Shuren wrote in the agency’s annual report.
Among other 2021 milestones: CDRH designated 213 submissions as breakthrough devices, authorized 50 devices using AI and machine learning, and, as the agency proudly declared, fired off 717 tweets. | Device news and other deals -
Consumer health brand Withings is acquiring health and fitness brand 8Fit. Withings in January acquired device maker Impeto Medical. - AliveCor, which makes consumer heart monitoring gadgets, announced that its KardiaMobile Card, a credit card-sized single-lead EKG device, earned clearance from the FDA.
- The wellness app Calm is acquiring Ripple Health Group — a health tech company working on tools to help patients manage care and connect with their providers — as it looks to build a suite of services called Calm Health.
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Clinical trials software platform Medable will acquire digital dermatology startup Omhu from LEO Pharma. - Remote patient monitoring company Athelas raised $132 million across two funding rounds led by General Catalyst and Tribe Capital, propelling its valuation to $1.5 billion.
- Jasper Health, a cancer support and navigation startup, raised $25 million in Series A funding led by General Catalyst with participation from Human Capital, W Health Ventures, Redesign Health, and 7wireVentures.
| New hires - Parallel, a telehealth platform for diagnosing conditions like ADHD in kids at school, appointed Susan Liu as chief operating officer. She was previously vice president of clinical operations at Cerebral.
- Tommy Carls joined surgical technology company Proprio as vice president of product marketing and management. Previously he was vice president of research development at Medtronic Spine and Biologics.
- Sema4, a health data analytics company, dded Jerry Conway as senior vice president of market access. He previously held roles at Scipher Medicine and Foundation Medicine.
- Digital therapeutics company Kaia Health hired Beth Jacobson as general counsel. She was previously deputy general counsel at Included Health.
- Kalderos, which sells technology for managing drug discounts, appointed Brent Dover as its chief executive officer. Dover was most recently chief executive at Commure.
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