- Privacy is so important,
and these devices that we hold in our hand, on our wrist,
on our computers, all have so much private information.
So, what does Apple will do to ensure
that all of that information stays private?
They just recently came out with this campaign
to bring more awareness to more specifically how they keep
your health data private.
You may have seen the commercial
that they just came out with.
It's a bunch of people in a doctor's office,
and then Jane Lynch's voice is doing a voiceover,
publicly calling out all of these people
with all of their health ailments in a public setting.
So for me, I recently had a health scare last year,
and I never really thought about all of the data
that is being collected by our Apple Watch,
by our phones, by all of the third party things
like our blood pressure.
I have a thermometer.
I also just recently got one of those metabolism trackers
that tracks how food is metabolizing
and all of that stuff syncs to my phone.
Now, a lot of it's not that precious of information
that I wouldn't probably share with all of you already,
but for a lot of people who are very private people,
they do not want their health data out there
and shared with the world.
So I love that Apple is really putting together
some documentation and promoting the fact
that all of this health data is safe and secure.
So to talk more about health and privacy,
I got a chance to chat with two people
from Apple all about this.
Dr. Sumbul Desai, she is Apple's Vice President of Health.
And Katie Skinner who is Head of User Privacy Engineering
at Apple.
So I'm obviously a huge Apple fan,
and from the iPhone to the Apple Watch,
and I love all of the health features.
So how do you guys kind of go about figuring out
what health features to put in these devices,
and what most can help customers?
- Well, first of all, I just wanna say I'm so happy to hear
that you're a huge fan, and I'm also really happy to hear
that you're doing really well
after your healthcare last year.
Thank you for sharing that story so openly.
It helps so many people, so thank you for that.
You know, when we think about our health features at Apple,
we really wanna think about how do we empower
hundreds of millions of people to take charge
of their future and their health
basically with the phone in their pocket
and a watch on their wrist.
And we really wanna think about how do we democratize
the availability of health and health information?
And, you know, we are very early in our stages of work
here at Apple, but the way we think about our features
is we really think about three things.
One, we wanna be able to use our technology to enable people
to be proactive about their health
and think about their health in a way that enables them
to be in charge sooner.
So we're not on the receiving end of bad information,
but actually trying to get ahead
of anything that's happening.
And we know that focusing on being proactive
is so important when it comes to your health.
We also think about our health features from a perspective
of thinking about three core components,
which is what can we tell you that's actionable?
What scientifically based and grounded in science?
And then perhaps most importantly, we think about privacy
from day one when it comes to our work,
and we think about the science from day one,
and also what are we gonna tell you
that's gonna allow you to take some action
around your health and focus on improving it,
giving you some information so you can do something with it.
And so, you know, when you think
about our health and fitness features from the Health app
to our cycle tracking experiences,
to sleep stages, to mobility, medications,
our goal is really we want individuals
to have control over their health information.
It should belong to you and you alone at all times.
And we want you to be able to use
that health information to be empowered
to take great steps to be healthy.
- And I think what's great is the Apple Watch
and all of these features, you don't really need them
on a day-to-day basis until you do.
So for me, having that super scary
health scare of a blood clot, for me, being able to know
my resting heart rate, what that normal basis is,
and also my blood oxygen levels was something
that I needed to be very consistent in taking.
And just knowing that I always had my Apple Watch on,
knowing those for me, like I think really did help me
be able to take control of my health.
And I think that's what's so empowering for a lot of people
is these devices are really giving that back
to just the everyday consumer,
and being able to have that information
to take to your doctors is really incredible.
- I love that.
And that's exactly what we're trying to achieve.
We want you to be in the driver's seat of your health,
and be empowered to ask the questions you need to ask.
You know, going through the health system
is hard and scary at times,
so we wanna make sure we can help you make that journey
a little bit more, a little bit easier,
but also just feel more like in the driver's seat
and empowered to say like, "Hey, let me ask these questions,
because I wanna know what this information means
and what it means to my health."
- And there's a lot of features, too,
that I've never even really needed to use myself,
but we were talking about the health sharing.
So if I want my parents or my grandmother to share
their health vitals with me like they can do that,
that's pretty powerful, so for a lot of people,
that might be scary, because they might think,
"Oh no, like my data's gonna be out there,"
so what are you guys kind of doing
to make sure that that's protected,
and it's only being shared
with those who they want it to be shared with.
- Whenever you share your health data
whether with an app or another person,
it's always only with explicit permission.
And so you have granular control over what types of data
you share with apps, as well as, people like loved ones
that you mentioned.
And so, these are always available to review, manage,
users can change them at at any point.
And we really think that that enables people to,
as you say, trust their device more,
so then they can really use
these super powerful health features to the fullest.
- That's awesome, yeah, I think that's something
that might put a lot of people's minds at ease,
especially with this new campaign,
which the commercial was really funny.
Like I feel like bringing attention to this
in such a comical way, I think,
will definitely have a lasting experience
with for a lot of people.
So Dr. Sumbul, you were talking about
the scientific-based data,
so can you talk a little bit more about that,
because I feel like that's something
that's really important as well.
- Yeah, I mean, when we develop health features,
the way we think about it is we wanna make sure
that from the get-go, we're thinking about
what is the science behind what we're able to do?
And so that, you know, that means a few things.
It means running small studies to really understand
the feasibility of whether or not we can achieve
a certain level of performance.
It means looking at the medical literature
and looking at medical data to understand
like if we have this piece of information,
what does that tell you about A, B, and C, and D?
It also means that we test against ground truth.
So for example, for our ECG features,
we test it against a 12 lead ECG,
which is considered the gold standard for heart rhythms.
And so the goal really is to make sure that our performance
is just as good or as close as to just as good
as what's considered the gold standard.
And then the last thing is,
again, just going back to that actionability,
we wanna make sure when we tell you something
that it is scientifically grounded in an action.
So for example, if you have any irregular
heart rhythm notification, we wanna make sure
that you can take a step to call,
go and contact a physician.
If we're telling you about your cardio fitness levels,
we wanna make sure that you understand
what your cardio fitness levels are,
and then give you scientifically validated information
about where you stand compared to others.
We have another feature called walking steadiness
that was actually developed off
of our Apple Heart and Movement Study,
where we had thousands of data points from our participants
in that study developed this feature.
And then actually, what that feature does is it tells you
if your walking steadiness is, you know,
if you're seeing early signs of imbalance.
And if we do, we actually provide you
with scientifically validated exercises to do
to be able to start working on your balance.
I mean a little known thing is that many of us start
having impact on our balance as early as our 30's and 40's,
and that can be a real key problem when it comes to injuries
earlier in life and falls as we get older.
So all important areas that we think about as we develop
our products and features for health.
- Now, it's amazing and I love hearing the stories
of how many people have been impacted by the Apple Watch,
whether it's saved their lives or being able
to just have all of that data easily accessible.
So I think that must be really powerful for a lot of you
at Apple to be able to really see that you have save lives,
and you have really made a difference.
So now talking about more of the privacy.
Now with this campaign, the commercial was so funny,
like I just love that you guys kind of brought this
comedic value to something that is so important,
because I think sometimes,
people take their privacy for granted.
A lot of times, they don't know what's happening
with this data.
So can you share how iPhone users or Apple Watch users,
can you share how the third party apps
and other people can stop sharing,
or like what that whole process is to make sure
that what they are sharing is what they wanna be sharing?
- Yeah, at any point, you can go and check
who you're sharing with in the Health app.
If you go to the top right corner,
you tap on your initials and there in the privacy section,
you can see who you're sharing with
in terms of applications and which devices.
And then if you wanna see which loved ones
that you're sharing with, then go to the sharing tab
and you can see right there.
- So obviously, this is built with Apple,
but what about third party apps?
How can we be sure that they aren't taking our data as well?
Like what kind of precautions are you guys putting in place?
- Well, I think one thing that you can do when considering
to download a third party app is you can check out
their nutrition label in the App Store,
and that can tell you more information
about their privacy policy and what kind of data
that they collect, and how that they're using it.
And so, any third party app that reads or writes data
from the Health app, they must comply with the terms
in the developer agreement and the App Store guidelines.
And so this really means that they can only use data
from the HealthKit framework for health purposes,
motion purposes, or fitness,
and they need to be clear to the user
about how they're going to use that data.
Also, this data can never be used
for advertising or similar services.
It can't be sold or disclosed advertising platforms.
And so, there's a lot of protections that we have built
into the store for apps that take advantage
and build great experiences based on your health data.
- Now how do you guys actually decide
what protections to build in?
- Well, I think that we take a look
at what is the threat landscape out there,
what are emerging threats, what are known threats?
And there are also some key principles
that we take a look at whenever we're building
any privacy feature.
And so, we have four privacy pillars
that we always keep in mind.
The first one is data minimization, and this is really about
only using the data that's really needed
to power the feature.
The second one is on device processing,
which is trying to do as much work on device,
so the data never has to leave the device.
And then transparency and control,
making sure the user understands
who they're sharing with and can make those changes.
And lastly, we have security, and this is a key one,
because this is what actually technically enforces
the choices that a user makes, making sure if they say
that they don't wanna share data with an app anymore,
that's technically stopped.
- That's great, so I guess moving forward just to ensure
that people are protected, their data is safe,
like what can you do to reassure them
that everything is safe and you can only share it
with who they want to?
- Health and HealthKit have really been built
from the beginning with privacy in mind.
Just to talk about how their health data is treated,
first, if the data is sitting on their phone
and the phone is locked with a passcode, touch ID, face ID,
all of the health and fitness data in the Health app,
other than the medical idea is encrypted,
and this data doesn't leave your device.
So then, if you choose to sync your health data to iCloud,
then it's encrypted both in transit and on Apple servers.
And for users that are running with the default on,
two factor authentication, as well as a passcode,
all of your health and activity data
is end-to-end encrypted.
And so what this really means is that it's backed up
in a way that Apple can't read it.
And to tell you maybe a little bit more
about end-to-end encryption, because sometimes,
that term is kind of bandied around,
might be kind of confusing to some people.
What it really means is that your data's encrypted with keys
that are derived from your devices and your device passcode.
So it's really protected by something only you know.
And so that means that you and your devices can decrypt
and access your health information,
but only on devices where you're signed in
with your Apple ID and nobody else, not even Apple,
can access this end-to-end encrypted health data.
I think that's one of those really key protections
paired with our control and transparency
that can really let users feel like they're in control
of what happens to their health data.
- That's great, thank you.
Dr. Sumbul, is there anything else that you'd like to add
that you feel that might be helpful for people
when they're kind of either getting into a fitness journey,
and how the Apple Watch and Apple Health and Fitness+
and all of these things can help people reach their goals?
- You know, I think the way we think about it
and what we're excited for users to understand
and hopefully leverage this as an important tool
is that as you're setting a goal, you set it very nicely.
This is information that you may come back to every day,
you may come back to it month to month,
but the fact that we have something that's able to collect,
you know, that information in a private and secure way,
and then provide you with information
that's really valuable and actionable is just priceless.
And so, to give you some examples, for example,
cardio fitness is a great measure
of your cardiac vascular health.
And when you are able to exercise
and are working out at a good level,
you'll see your cardio fitness levels at a certain level.
I, for example, recently had an injury,
and I noticed my cardio fitness levels drop,
and I use that as one of the metrics to work back
to where I was before.
So it kind of set this goal up for me
to be able to get to achieve again.
And, you know, that means working out with some intensity,
working out for a certain amount of time,
and making sure that I got back to the levels that I was at.
And so that's what we really want you to think about
is like how can this data be helpful
to you to be actionable?
I mean, the fact that it is private and secure
is so incredibly important, but also we wanna make sure
that that data is yours and yours alone
for you to set goals with.
You know, privacy is so fundamental to everything we do
that we wanna do that thinking for you,
so you can just really enjoy achieving and setting goals
for yourself and interacting with that health information
in the way that you want to,
to empower you to be as healthy as you can be.
- For sure, and there's so many different types
of third party things like temperatures,
scales, blood pressure coughs.
I just recently got one that measures your metabolism,
you like breathe inside of it.
So it's like all of that stuff is just being,
you know, centered around your phone and the health data,
and being able to share that with your doctor
if you ever need to, I think is so important
and it makes it so easy.
And I think for consumers and just everyday people,
like this is really letting us kind of take the power back,
be able to take the health into our own hands
and really kind of,
you know, be able to have that information.
- I think we're really excited
that paired with the super funny commercial,
we also have a health and privacy white paper
that can allow people to learn more
about what are those protections that you're talking about.
- So Dr. Sumbul, as far as privacy goes,
I mean that's such a huge concern for health data.
So how are you guys kind of taking that
at the forefront at Apple?
- Well, we just shared with you our new campaign,
and it's about health data privacy specifically.
So when we, you know, the campaign that we shared is funny
and lighthearted and happens to star
the voice of Jane Lynch, but it actually highlights a topic
that's incredibly important to us, which is, you know,
incredibly important to us at Apple,
which is privacy and specifically health data privacy.
And so for many of us, there's nothing more sensitive
than our health data and we've seen how critical it is
in the financial world to protect privacy
of a person's financial data.
Well, health data is just as, if not more so,
a priority to protect.
And so, after all, there's really nothing more important
than our health and so we really think
that people should expect the same confidentiality
from their technology as they do from their doctors.
It's why privacy is so fundamental to everything we make
and in the health space and beyond,
we create health features that we believe you should decide
what you want to do, who you wanna share it with,
and have the ability to stop sharing that at any time.
And so, it's really one of the reasons
that privacy is such a central core to the principles
that I shared earlier, which is around scientific validation
and actionability.
We're very intentional as you heard from Katie
around the design of our health products,
and privacy's really a central part of design
just from the ideation phase.
So from the get-go, we think about it from day one.
And so, we think this is what it looks like to democratize
health in the right way, and we wouldn't settle
for anything else.
And honestly, neither should any of you.
You know, we're excited to empower our users
with health information and be in control
of their health information in a private and secure way.
- Now, that's awesome, thank you so much.
I mean, I do feel like Apple and my Apple Watch
and all of this technology really did kind of help me
not only get my health in check,
but also potentially could have saved my life.
And I think that that's gonna help so many other people too.
And it's so great to know that you guys
do have privacy in mind.
Thank you guys so much for joining me.
- Thank you so much.
- Bye, see you later.
Bye, guys.
- Thank you, guys, so much for watching,
and a huge thank you to Dr. Sumbul and Katie
for joining me here in this video to explain
a little bit more about how Apple
is taking great care of not only our health,
but also ensuring that that health data stays private.
I'd love to hear from you guys though in the comments,
so be sure to leave some below.
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And with that, I'll see you guys in the next one.