Join the businesses who have begun to edge out competitors by scouring the web for alternative data.

Apple ($AAPL) introduced the world to its Research app on Tuesday, which allows Apple Watch and iPhone users to share personal health data with major organizations. We noticed there has been a sharp increase in the number of job listings with the word "health" lately. In 2018 alone health app hirings doubled, and are just going up and up.



This lines up with data we previously covered. Wearables are a rising share of Apple's total revenue stream, and from 2018 to 2019 the wearables division went from 6.22% to 10.27% of its total revenue. We can also search for the specific number of job listings with the word "sensors" in them to see that Apple is very much taking this new initiative seriously.

With the Research app, the updated health app for iOS 13 and Watch OS6, expect more to come from Apple in the next few years. Apple will always be a hardware company, but is growing its software technology at an exponential rate. CEO Tim Cook highlighted machine learning gains insights into people's health, and showcased all the new improvements coming with the new iPhone 11. They include environmental noise level monitoring, step counting, heart rate counters, menstrual cycle tracking, ECG monitoring, and sleep tracking.

You can read more about the specific details in the official statement released entitled "In Collaboration with Leading Medical Institutions, Apple to Examine Hearing, Women’s, Mobility and Heart Health."

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.

Further Reading: