Apple reportedly scales back ambitious ‘HealthHabit’ project for transforming healthcare Guides

Apple is reportedly scaling back one of its most ambitious healthcare projects. According to a new report from Insider, Apple is scaling back HealthHabit, an internal application that Apple employees can use to track fitness goals, talk to clinicians, and manage hypertension.

Insider offers some background on HealthHabit, which some employees believed could have been a consumer-facing offering at some point if it had been a success internally.

It’s an app called HealthHabit that Apple employees can use to log fitness goals, manage hypertension and talk to clinicians and coaches at AC Wellness, the doctors’ group that Apple works with.

Health Habit is part of Apple Health, an organization of several hundred engineers, program managers, data scientists, designers, and physicians that oversee Apple’s clinics, consumer features such as the heart rate and fitness tools, and secretive digital health bets.

Apple has been piloting coaching programs for workers with hypertension in tandem with AC Wellness for the past few years, and employees viewed HealthHabit as a logical next step to bring that work to life, three people said. If HealthHabit had success internally, it could have been a product for customers one day, the people said.

The report says that more than 50 employees were “spending a significant amount of time” working on the application. If those employees can’t find another role within Apple over the next several weeks, they will reportedly be laid off with severance.

The future of HealthHabit is unclear at this point. Insider speculates that the project could continue but with a smaller team, or it could be completely shut down.

The news comes after a report from the Wall Street Journal earlier this year shed light on the internal issues facing HealthHabit and Apple’s broader healthcare ambitions. That report also suggested that Apple had explored setting up primary care clinics, with Apple Watch relaying health data to Apple doctors.

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