Divya Nag, health tech lead at Apple placed second on the annual ranking of the 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2016, the annual ranking by Fast Company. Nag was named “for moving Apple into the doctor’s office.”
Introduced in 2009, the Most Creative People list honors “an influential and diverse group of leading thinkers around the globe.”
“Our goal is to discover and highlight the people around the world who are not just thinking differently, but also putting their ideas into action to create new opportunities, redefine the rules of modern business, and drive change within their own industries and beyond,” says Fast Company editor Robert Safian. “In today’s rapidly evolving world, it is creative and innovative leaders like these 100 who will continue to move the needle and inspire us all.”
Nag leads the team at Apple that created ResearchKit, an open-source developer toolbox that piggybacked on the company’s HealthKit framework—which allows users to store and share health data—to allow doctors and researchers to create apps that make it easy to participate in medical research. There are now several dozens in play, including ones for autism, Parkinson’s disease, and even NFL–related concussions.
With ResearchKit, researchers studying everything from autism to diabetes can collect data from tens of thousands of patients via phones, rather than limiting their studies to people who can physically get to their research facilities. Fast Company says Nag is now bringing this data-sharing effort to the patient-physician relationship. Through Apple’s new CareKit tools, doctors can automatically alert outpatients when it’s time to take their medications or exercise—while patients can reciprocate with continual updates on their condition.
Doctors and hospitals are already using CareKit apps to provide better care, staying in touch with post-surgery patients, and there are countless applications for monitoring diabetes, mental health, pregnancy, and more, according to Fast Company. Nag dropped out of Stanford when she was 20 years old to found Stem Cell Theranostics, a drug screening biotech, and StartX Med, the official medical innovation accelerator program for Stanford University and Stanford Hospital. She joined Apple in 2014.
Eliminate things you don’t want in your photos with Snapheal CK
