Technology giant Apple Inc. (NSDQ:AAPL) has nabbed up a slew of biosensor experts from a variety of digital health startups, fueling rumors that the company is working on sensor-laden technologies.
Apple has yet to say if or when it will release a so-called "iWatch" or what, exactly, such a device would be capable of, but a recent hiring spree has included Nancy Dougherty, formerly involved with transdermal drug delivery devices and wearable vital signs monitoring, and Ravi Narasimhan, who also worked with personal vital sign monitoring.
Dougherty was the lead hardware developer at Sano Intelligence, which is working on wearable sensors that can continuously capture and transmit blood chemistry to just about any device, thanks to an open communications platform that the company calls "API for the bloodstream." Prior to her role at Sano, Dougherty worked in hardware and electrical engineering for Proteus Digital Health, maker of a Bluetooth transdermal ‘Band-Aid’ style patch that could not only monitor heart rate, temperature, motion, respiration and other vital signs, the patch could detect and monitor related "smart pills" that were ingested and activated in the body.
Apple hired Narasimhan from Vital Connect, a company working on a personal emergency response system comprised of a wearable sensor that could detect falls and track physiological activity, transmitting the data to a smartphone app. Narasimhan also holds "dozens of patents related to medical sensors," according to MobiHealthNews.
These latest hires aren’t Apple’s 1st to fit with growing speculation that the company’s building a sensor-laden iWatch. The tech titan last year hired high-level members of C8 MediSensors and Senseonics.
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