Recent news announcements indicate that Apple is acquiring Tueo Health, a small Redwood City based startup focused on monitoring asthma in sleeping pediatric patients.
The deal was initially reported by CNBC. Apple, like other tech giants, hopes to bolster its intellectual property (IP) in the healthcare space as it continues to roll our more health-oriented features in its hardware products.
According to the company’s LinkedIn profile,
Tueo Health is creating a digital health solution for improved asthma management empowering patients and their families to take control of the disease. Founded out of the Stanford Biodesign Fellowship by William Kethman, Bronwyn Harris, Todd Murphy, Frank Wang, Michael Carchia.
According to a Stanford University blog, Bronwyn Harris and William Kethman co- founded Tueo Health out of the Biodesign Innovation Fellowship in 2015 with teammates Todd Murphy, and Frank Wang. Innovation Fellow Michael Carchia (2015-16) is the company’s CTO. In the blog interview, the co-founders were quoted saying
Bronwyn: With innovators coming out of university programs, I think there’s a tendency to feel like you should incorporate and launch a company as quickly as possible. But don’t rush it. There’s a lot of value in spending time under the umbrella of Stanford or another academic institution – especially if you can be supported by grant funding – to make sure you deeply understand the need and to hone aspects of your solution before raising significant money, which comes with substantial responsibilities and a ticking clock.
William: The extra time allows you to really think through your approach and de-risk your project before you commit to raising capital and spending years of your life working on it. For us, it meant that when we finally started meeting with prospective investors and potential business partners, we had most of the answers to their difficult questions.
Bloomberg had reported that Apple will overhaul its Health app with hearing health and menstrual cycle tracking in its iOS 13 update, which will be announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June.