After releasing its Empirical Sleep Tracker in 2022, Empirical Health has launched its new app and service that’s designed to deliver “proactive primary care” specifically for Apple Watch users. The big idea is to use all that valuable Apple Watch data as a “whole health monitor” with seamless access to virtual doctor appointments, actionable and trackable personalized health plans, and more.
Empirical Health co-founder Brandon Ballinger highlights that Apple Watch measures over 650 health data points every day but less than 1% of doctors are using the information for patient care.
Working to build what he calls “the primary care of the future,” Empirical Health for iPhone and Apple Watch is designed to use all the helpful health data, AI, and virtual care along with a value-based care business model to deliver “concierge medicine at scale.”
Not only does Empirical Health include the consumer-facing app, but also a fully licensed, registered, and insured medical practice with “AI-enabled EMR software to help our in-house physicians sift through all that health data.”
Here are the four major features of Empirical Health:
- Today: Today summarizes all of your Apple Watch health sensor information in one place: heart rate, EKG and irregular heart rhythm notifications, steps and activity, oxygen saturation, resting heart rate, heart rate recovery, and more. You can set customized target ranges for metrics like heart rate, in order to track whether you’re on track and healthy today.
- Doctor Chat: Doctor chat lets you talk with a medical doctor to get diagnoses and personalized treatment plans. While anybody can use the Empirical Health app, doctor chat is currently available in select US states (with more states coming) and is a paid subscription. We’re fully licensed, registered, and insured and accept many major US health insurance plans.
- Goals: Goals are a bit like Activity Rings — but customized to your own unique health goals. For example, people with POTS can track salt intake, water, medication, and recumbent exercise. You can configure customized rest days. We have programs with goals for heart health, sleep health, general exercise & fitness, and POTS.
- Learn: Learn is our free library of articles on how to interpret your Apple Watch data and manage medical conditions. We have articles on sleep stages (REM/deep/core sleep), POTS, heart rate variability (HRV), and more. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Request an article and one of our data scientists or doctors will consider writing it next!
While Empirical Health highlights its app and Apple Watch offers a whole health approach to primary care, it’s also been built with some specialized programs to help with:
- Sleep apnea: Sleep apnea is frequently underdiagnosed, and often sleep stages data (e.g., lack of REM sleep) is an early warning sign. If a patient has symptoms of sleep apnea, we can prescribe an FDA-cleared at-home sleep test to confirm a diagnosis, and then prescribe CPAP or other treatments if medically necessary.
- Preventive heart health: We combine the Apple Watch’s irregular rhythm notifications and ECGs with conventional lab testing (e.g., cholesterol and blood pressure) to more comprehensively evaluate heart health and build a customized treatment plan.
- Long COVID / POTS: We use the Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor and workouts, as well as patient-reported data on salt/water/medication, to track the effectiveness of a comprehensive POTS treatment. The patient gets an interface that looks a bit like a version of Activity Rings customized to their actual treatment plan (e.g., rings for medication, salt intake, water, and exercise).
At launch, Empirical Health medical plans are available from $9/month or $84/year for customers in California, Florida, Hawaii, and Texas with more states “launching soon.”
However, the app without medical care is available as a free download for anyone from the App Store.
Along with engineer Brandon Ballinger, Empirical Health was co-founded and created by Raquel Rodriguez, MD who practiced at Kaiser and taught at UC San Francisco.
You check out more about Empirical Health and its proactive primary care mission on its website.
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