9to5Mac spotted these new joinees in Apple’s team last week. Nancy Dougherty, formerly with Sano Intelligence and Ravi Narasimhan, who has worked with medical devices firm Vital Connect have now joined Apple. Narasimhan had been the Vice President of Research and Development at Vital Connect, while Dougherty was in charge of hardware development.
She was involved in a project to bring a patch to read blood glucose and potassium levels. The patch would be somewhat like a band-aid and would use needle-less technology to track the reading. Dougherty was instrumental in bringing system “from conception through development and board spins to a functioning wearable pilot device,” according to her LinkedIn page. Previously, she was employed with Proteus Digital Health on a Bluetooth enabled electronic Band-Aid that monitored heart rate, respiration, motion and temperature.
Narasimhan, on the other hand, had been “responsible for biosensor technology and algorithms for remote physiological monitoring with wearable medical devices“. He worked on developing devices that could track functions such as heart rate, respiration, fall detection as well as posture and activity.
Now while it isn’t known what Apple will really have the two working on, speculation of a wearable coming from the Cupertino company is rife. It’s not the first time Apple has made a hiring of this sort that could hint at a developing wearable device. Jay Blahnik developer of the Nike FuelBand joined Apple in August last year and in July, it hired former Yves Saint Laurent CEO, Paul Deneve to work on “special projects”.
The publication reports that besides working on sensors that could track a person’s activity and vital statistics, the company also seems to be working on other biometric technologies like embedding fingerprint scanners into Multi-Touch screens, Apple’s Touch ID coming to screens of Apple products and more. Apple is also reportedly looking at Iris scanning technology, something that is also supposed to be coming to the Samsung Galaxy S5 later this year. It is also working on new ways of using sensors like compasses and accelerometers to improve facial recognition. The new hires could well be working on this and not an iWatch necessarily too.
If Apple’s intention was to intrigue us, consider our attentions piqued. It should be interesting to see what the company will do with medical sensor experts on board. Maybe take on Google’s diabetes-tracking contact lenses? We never know.
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