Apple is busy on a recruitment drive for more medical tech personnel, adding further fuel to the rumour fire that Cupertino is looking to produce some manner of standalone medical device.
This speculation kicked off last November, when chief executive Tim Cook was interviewed by the Telegraph, and talked about how he wouldn't put the Apple Watch through the FDA's process (the body which regulates medical devices over in the US).
However, he hinted that there could be an incoming piece of hardware (or possibly an app) which could need FDA approval.
And now Buzzfeed has spotted four job postings for Apple's health division which have popped up this month and last.
They include two positions for biomedical engineers with expertise in medical, health and fitness sensors and devices, along with software, and one role involves developing "prototype hardware for physiological measurement applications".
There's also a posting looking for a lab technician who knows his or her biomedical and/or hardware engineering and health sensor onions, and a role for a project manager, too.
New recruits
If Apple is recruiting along these lines it certainly makes an upcoming medical device seem more likely, particularly with the mention of prototyping. And Buzzfeed also trawled LinkedIn and spotted that since last autumn, at least five medical tech staff have already joined Apple's ranks.
Those employees include biomedical engineer Jay Mung, who previously worked for Medtronic, and before that Quantason. Previous to that, he was the founder of Sinc Labs LLC, an R&D consultancy outfit which dealt with "medical image-guided interventions, robotics and big data".
Put this all together and, well, you have a collection of vague rumours and pieces of speculation, but it's certainly pointing in the right direction when it comes to a possible medical device from Apple. We very much doubt anything will be happening in the near future, though.
However, Cupertino would be foolish not to go in this direction eventually, given that the company already has a ready-made slogan for the product. After all, 'An Apple a day keeps the doctor away'.
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