Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of Health, named to TIME’s list of the world’s most influential people in health

Dr. Sumbul Desai, vice president of Health at Apple, has been named to TIME magazine’s inaugural “TIME100 Health List of the World’s Most Influential People in Health.”

The list is a “community of leaders from across industries—scientists, doctors, advocates, educators and policy-makers, among others—dedicated to creating tangible, credible change for a healthier world.”Desai came to work at Apple in 2017. Prior to that, she was Stanford Medicine’s digital health leader. 

Here’s what TIME has to say about her: Dr. Sumbul Desai, vice president of health at Apple, is hoping to prove that personal-tech devices can be good for our mental health. Desai has been a key force behind new health tools on the iPhone and Apple Watch, teaming up with prominent medical researchers at universities around the country to conduct landmark health studies that inform the health features pushed out to tens of millions of users. “I think we’re just scratching the surface of how biometrics can tie to aspects of our health,” says Desai. 

Led by Desai, Apple partnered with UCLA in 2020 on a three-year mental-health study of more than 3,000 participants to glean insights into how we diagnose and treat depression and anxiety. “We’re assessing objective measures like sleep, physical activity, heart rate, daily routines, and use Apple Watch and iPhone to give us a sense of what the relationship is between these factors and symptoms of depression and anxiety,” says Desai. The goal is for UCLA to then use the data to help health care providers pick up warning signs and prevent the onset of depressive episodes, track the effectiveness of treatment, and potentially understand the underlying causes of depression. Early findings show that late bedtimes, staying home more, and spending more time sitting and less time exercising are all associated with higher rates of depression.