MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Apple’s (NSDQ:AAPL) foray into healthcare appears to be accelerating as the company leads up to the launch of its latest iOS 8 software, which will include the new Health app.

In addition to hospital groups and electronic medical record providers, Apple is also rumored to be looking at partnerships with healthcare payors. A report from Bloomberg this week stated that Apple had taken meetings with Humana and UnitedHealth executives to develop ways to incorporate wearable fitness devices into insurance discount and reward programs.

The programs are looking to combine wearable activity trackers with cloud-based analysis and tracking in order to reward patients for healthy behavior.

Apple unveiled the Health app and the related HealthKit software development platform at its June conference, where it also said that it had developed partnerships with the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, Johns Hopkins and other hospital groups. Apple further revealed that it had been working with electronic medical record provider Epic, but details of that deal are still sparse.

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