Apple has hired Rajiv Kumar, a doctor who specializes in treating kids with diabetes, reports Fast Company. Kumar made headlines in the fall of 2015 by creating a HealthKit-enabled diabetes monitoring system for young patients at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University.
He began piloting HealthKit in March 2015 with 10 patients, including Blake, to assess its ability to track blood-sugar levels. Patients wear a continuous glucose monitor that sends 288 blood-sugar readings a day to an Apple mobile device through Bluetooth. The data is securely transmitted via HealthKit into the patient’s electronic medical record at Stanford Children’s Health through the MyChart app.
Kumar’s former employer, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital CEO Christopher Dawes, told Fast Company that Kumar will keep a part-time appointment at the hospital. It’s not clear whether Kumar will continue to work with HealthKit or contribute to another product/service such as ResearchKit and CareKit.
In the past few years, Apple has recruited a team of medical experts to help guide its strategy as it moves into health care. Its team currently includes Divya Nag, a former biotech entrepreneur, and Mike O’Reilly, an anesthesiologist who runs the ResearchKit platform.
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