Departures of Apple Health employees divided on their ambitions

The Apple health team has experienced a series of departures over the last year after a series of leadership changes and internal disagreements regarding guidance.

The tension has increased in the health care team in recent months, according to eight people familiar with the situation, although this undercurrent began several years ago. Some employees are disappointed with the group's culture, where some have flourished, others feel marginalized and unable to advance their ideas. Four of the eight employees indicated that some employees were hoping to take on larger challenges related to the health care system, such as medical devices, telemedicine, and health care payments. Instead, the focus has been on features aimed at a broad population of healthy users.

These people asked to remain anonymous because they were not allowed to talk about Apple's health efforts or departures. They noted that health was still a strategic priority for Apple.

Apple has expressed its commitment to health. This was a key factor for Apple Watch sales, which turned Apple's portable equipment business into a growth engine as iPhone sales slowed. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said that Apple's health would be "the greatest contribution of society to humanity".

It is not clear that the attrition rate within the health team is higher than in other groups within Apple. But discrepancies and internal tensions around the group's vision show how tech companies could stumble into the notoriously complex health sector of $ 3.5 trillion. Ambitious employees on the ground are eager to tackle the most serious problems in the health system. But that does not always correspond to the more gradual and measured product approach of big tech companies. In addition, health care is notoriously complex and slow compared to other areas of technology.

Among the most recent departures: Christine Eun, who has been with Apple for almost eight years and has a background in marketing, has left this month, according to two people; Brian Ellis, who left the team overseeing AC Wellness, a subsidiary that operates health clinics for Apple employees, returned to Apple Music in June; and Matt Krey, who left Apple in May and takes the time to focus on his family, according to LinkedIn. Other recent departures include Warris Bokhari, who visited Anthem this summer, and researcher Andrew Trister, who was recruited by the Gates Foundation earlier this month.

Apple declined to comment on this story.

The Health Team reports to Jeff Williams, Chief Operating Officer of the company, who is passionate about the medical sector. Two people said that Williams had pushed the Watch team to explore sensors and algorithms in the health sector in 2016, after it became apparent that fashion was not shifting. needle for users.

This year, a survey of Health Team employees showed signs of dissatisfaction, according to two people.. After the investigation, Williams personally spoke to several employees to determine the source of the problem and indicated that he remained deeply attached to the health group. As a COO, however, he has many other tasks, including overseeing Apple's operations and supply chain.

Kevin Lynch, who oversees software projects, includes the group of physicians and engineers working on medical records; Eugene Kim, who directs the watch equipment; and Sumbul Desai, who oversees the clinical team that runs the AC Wellness Health Clinics, the Electrocardiogram App and the Apple Heart Study, as well as the Health Strategy. Myoung Cha, a former health consultant, also works with health insurance groups, such as Atna, and pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson.

Desai, Lynch and Kim are all from Williams. Cha has a different chain of command and reports to Douglas Beck, vice president of Americans and Northeast Asia. These four leaders manage hundreds of people at Apple Health, which has been actively recruiting and developing in recent years.

At present, there is not a single senior vice president dedicated to health.

Most of the Apple Health employees who left the company worked for the Desai Group or shortly after being hired at Stanford University in the summer of 2017, where she led many of her health efforts. digital.

Desai is a training physician. She was led to lead clinical efforts, particularly in Apple's health clinics, in the summer of 2017. She then expanded her field of action to other areas, including the Apple Heart Study and the application and the electrocardiogram sensor, one of the people said. (At present, two people said that the former director of hospital operations, Mr. Osman Akhtar, ran the daily operations of the clinics.)

One of the key issues is the long-term vision within the Apple Health Team. Four people told CNBC that some employees felt that the company could undertake more ambitious projects and do more in the area of ​​health. However, its products and services are mainly limited to well-being and prevention. People have noted that these differences of opinion have broken out between different groups.

Well-being involves helping those who are generally healthy in areas such as exercise, meditation and sleep, while medical applications target patients with specific diseases. Well-being is less risky and less regulated than the diagnosis and treatment of disease, but that's not where the costs are borne by the health system. According to the CDC, almost 90% of US health expenditures are for people with chronic conditions.

One faction wanted to set up a telemedicine service and opt for health care payments to simplify insurance billing, but failed to move these initiatives forward.

Others wanted to do more with Beddit, a sleep sensor that a team at Apple had spent several months checking before acquiring it in mid-2017.

There are also disagreements about AC Wellness health clinics and whether they need to develop medical software and eventually produce products for clinicians, or stay focused on Apple employees. Jason Fass, a veteran of Apple, left AC Wellness in 2017. (AC Wellness is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, but Apple employees work there and publish job offers. job on the Apple website.)

There was also tension over the amount that the health team should borrow from the Apple game book.

When the company announced its electrocardiogram for the Apple Watch in the fall of 2018, some doctors and other players in the medical sector other than Apple have reacted negatively to this news. This frustrated some internal people who had advocated for a small and targeted product launch, which meant that the medical community was starting to weigh in and asking questions to reduce any potential repercussions. The company is compromised by secretly gathering groups of medical experts, including cardiologists, every six months or so at its headquarters, and introducing content developed with the support of Apple's doctors. specifically for doctors.

In addition, two of the interviewees said that there were also disagreements about the degree of transparency of the company vis-à-vis its work for the medical sector. Apple was previously very secretive about his projects. However, it is more difficult to maintain this level of confidentiality in health care because the industry generally uses published research, clinical studies and open dialogue with industry stakeholders.

Robin Goldstein also left the group in the last two decades and recently worked in the health regulatory field before leaving at the end of 2017; Anil Sethi, former director of Apple Health, left late 2017 to form a start-up specializing in health technologies; Stephen Friend, a leading researcher on Apple who left late 2017; Charles Schlaff, who worked on Apple Watch before moving on to special projects and left in November 2018, according to LinkedIn; Craig Mermel, an engineer at Apple Health, left to join Google Brain in February; and Yoky Matsouka, who had been appointed to lead health but who had left after less than a year in 2016, is now vice president of Google.

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