Apple reportedly plans to unveil health coaching and mood tracking

Apple plans to introduce a suite of new health offerings including coaching, activity journaling and mood tracking, per reporting this week from Bloomberg and the WSJ.

Why it matters: The efforts would further cement Apple's position in the fitness tracking market and expand the company's health efforts from the Apple Watch to the iPad.

• Wearable rivals including Oura, Noom, Whoop and Google-Fitbit have long vied against the company.

Details: Apple's services are aimed at improving users' overall wellness, though the first new service will include a component aimed at helping users manage vision conditions such as nearsightedness.

• The AI-powered coaching service — referred to internally as Quartz — is slated for next year and will be focused on helping users boost their fitness, sleeping and eating habits, per Bloomberg.
• The tools for emotion tracking and vision management will be added to the health app this year.
• The journaling app, codenamed Jurassic, aims to help users keep tabs on their daily activities, including how much time they spend at home, per the WSJ.
• Apple also plans to release the first iPad-friendly version of its health app later this year as part of iPadOS 17, according to Bloomberg.

Between the lines: Apple has ambitious plans to hone both services, including adding elements of personalization and algorithmic prediction, according to the reporting.

• For example, Jurassic will suggest journaling topics based on a user's activities, per the WSJ, and is predicted to include a feature for estimating physical proximity to others.
• Apple envisions its emotion-tracking tools as one day advancing enough to assess a user’s mood based on their speech, the words they’ve typed and other device data, according to Bloomberg.

Catch up quick: Apple's foray into health began in 2014 when it launched the health app and kicked into higher gear with the 2015 release of the Apple Watch.

• In 2021, the iPhone maker rolled out a medical record feature that lets users share specific health data with specific people.
• The Apple Watch now has a mechanism for assessing the heart condition atrial fibrillation as well as tracking sleep and detecting falls.
• And earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Apple was making big strides on a secretive moonshot of noninvasive blood sugar monitoring technology.

The bottom line: Four years after CEO Tim Cook promised his company's "greatest contribution to mankind" would "be about health,” Apple is continuing to take big bites of progress toward that goal.