The Upshot on why Apple revealed a new medications feature on the Apple Watch and iPhone Health app at its Worldwide Developers Conference

Apple is strongly leaning into healthcare. With each new launch the company is showing the versatility of the Apple Watch and Health app and exploring just how far these technologies can reach. A key question of their adoption will depend on consumer comfort with sharing medication information with Apple. 

In addition to medication reminders, the new tool will also allow US users to receive alerts about possible drug interactions between the medicines they are taking. The tool also works with Apple’s health sharing function. This function allows users to share data with loved ones or a user’s professional care team where Apple is integrated with the provider's electronic health record. 

Medication alerts in clinical decision support tools like UpToDate have been used by healthcare providers for some time to help avoid prescribing medications with dangerous interactions and to support proper drug dosing and drug administration. 

For patients with multiple comorbidities who are prescribed a number of medications, it is likely that some of these drugs may have interactions. In cases where the benefit of the drug to the patient outweighs minor non-serious interactions, a physician may prescribe both medicines anyway. It will be interesting to see how precise Apple’s medication interaction feature is and how this changes patient/provider discussions around prescribing practices.