Apple may venture into health coaching and blood glucose management

A new patent hints at Apple venturing into the health coaching space.

What you need to know

• A new patent talks about potential health coaching features in the Health app.
• It also hints at blood glucose monitoring.

As reported from My Healthy Apple, Apple is conducting new research that could result in more targeted health coaching including assistance with blood glucose monitoring.

A new patent talks about notifying users in a more effective way, rather than adding to the endless alerts that many of us receive on our phones. It also talks about a potential health coach feature that would help users stay on course with their health goals.

A health coach can work with one or more participants over a series of sessions (e.g., a set of days (e.g., 10 days)) to monitor health-related events and data, such as diet and blood glucose data to assist the one or more participants with better understanding their physiological reaction to health-related events and, potentially, to assist the one or more participants with modifying their behavior to improve their health. For example, a coach can work with a pre-diabetic participant to, in a first session, first understand the impact of various events, that the participant would log, on their blood glucose. Ability to connect with the coach is easy via a "Connect" tab on the bottom of the screen in the Health coaching app.

The patent also talks about habit tracking to either encourage you to meet new habits or avoid bad ones.

In some instances, the habit challenge can specify one or more actions (e.g., "EAT PROTEIN BAR IMMEDIATELY AFTER EXERCISE") that are to be performed throughout the day to meet the challenge, while in other cases the habit challenge can specify one or more actions that should be avoided to meet the challenge (e.g., "DO NOT DRINK SUGARED SODA").

While it is unclear when or if the feature will roll out to users, it is something to keep an eye on as Apple ventures further into the health area. The company, just last month, launched its Apple Fitness+ workout subscription service.