Apple gets into longevity.
Am I excited? Absolutely. But probably not about what you're thinking.
On September 9, Apple announced a redesigned Health app with a Longevity tab, Health Age, movement assessments, and a Quest panel of more than 50 biomarkers for $119. It arrives later this year. Apple announcement
Last year, I wrote about Apple saying “longevity” out loud. This year, it's putting more of the things people buy from longevity companies into its own Health app.
Which is interesting, to say the least, if you are in this industry.
We're now in year 3 of what I'd call the current consumer longevity era. Since the beginning, I have grown from being very enthusiastic, to now being pretty uninterested in interpretation and synthesis platforms.
Instead, I am far more interested in accurate, continuous data collection.
For example, I've found health-age scores directionally helpful, but noisy. Across various proprietary devices and platforms, I've mostly stopped paying close attention to mine, given they're all over the place.
That leaves a pretty basic business question: if my phone can organize my results and explain them, what makes me pay for another service?
Oura, WHOOP, and Ultrahuman already combine bloodwork with wearable data. Function and InsideTracker sell testing and interpretation too. Apple has plenty of company here. Oura, WHOOP, Ultrahuman, InsideTracker
I wanted to know how those lab businesses are actually doing, so I dug a bit deeper. There is real demand, although the numbers companies share answer very different questions.