How do we give you a notification but won't scare you? Oh boy, do we have a special one today. Today, we're interviewing an Apple exec. At Apple, we believe that technology can help you live a healthier life. Zumbul Desai is the vice president of Health. at Apple. She's the person behind features like sleep apnea notifications, the ECG app, the heart rate app, irregular rhythm notifications, the vitals app, sleep tracking, mental health features, and so much more.
a man's life, detecting a potentially deadly heart condition called a AFib. I have no question that it saved my life. What was Apple's greatest contribution to mankind? It will be about health. Every time we hear stories like that. It never gets old. It's amazing because if you think about why a lot of us who work in health do what we do, we do it because of these stories. We want to be able to have impact. Is Apple releasing a ring?
Yo, what's up? Welcome to Inside the Ecosystem. Welcome to Inside the Ecosystem. Welcome to Inside the Ecosystem. Welcome to Inside the Ecosystem. It's not about the products. It's about life. It's about real experiences. This is Inside the Ecosystem, the podcast. Well, welcome to Inside the Ecosystem.
Thanks for having me. This is so exciting. Yeah. I was just telling you, like, I am really beyond excited for you to be here because this podcast is literally built for you, what you do in your daily life. So first off, we're currently in Champs-Élysées in Paris. It's raining. We've literally got the Eiffel Tower, the views. I mean, it can't get any better than this. Cannot get any better than this. So the first question that I have for you is, what does the Apple ecosystem mean to you?
You know, the Apple ecosystem for me, not surprisingly, actually means a few things. One, obviously delight and joy, because I think we do a lot to really improve people's lives. But it also means, and this is not the surprising part given what I do, is we use the whole ecosystem to keep you healthy. There's a lot of features in our ecosystem that many
that may not be considered a traditional health product, but actually do bring aspects of health and wellness to your life. What are your top three favorite ones? Or give me one of you. Well, I'll give you, I mean, just to kind of pull on the thread that I was just talking about is... photos are something that you know think about all the joy that you get by reflecting on good moments so like memories within photos is one of my absolute favorites and i think if you take a moment to
reflect on all of the amazing experiences that you're able to capture with photos and camera it's pretty remarkable and it can be a source of gratitude and joy and i think that it also contributes to health and wellness particularly mental health and wellness My favorite health feature is the cardio fitness feature. I love kind of seeing what my VO2 max does over time. And, you know, there's times when
You're recovering from an injury, which I'm doing right now. And you see little drops. So it forces me. Are you doing better? I'm doing better and it pushes me to go better and do better. And so I love that about it. Are you working out at Apple Park every day? Not at Apple Park, but I do work out. The gym is nice. Walking at Apple Park is a workout. And, you know, we've released some...
There's so many features. It's like picking your favorite child. So it's kind of hard. So for me, my favorite product of all time is the Apple Watch. Yeah. And I feel like it's evolved into so much and it's matured so much over the years. And I wanted to ask you what... What do you think the role of the Apple Watch is in the Apple ecosystem right now? I think it's your... It really is...
And, you know, it was initially positioned this way, but it's truly turning out to be this. It is your most personal product. It's the most personal product we have. And its role in the ecosystem is everything from companion to coach to health guardian to being able to... you know, the part just keeping you connected, right? It's also a very good looking watch. And it's a beautiful looking watch.
The Design by Apple book right here opened in my favorite product of all time. Yes, and it's a stunning watch. Which I couldn't afford. But I mean, I love the launch of the Apple Watch and what it... truly meant for the ecosystem and now what it's evolved into so the apple watch is saving lives as well i don't know if you saw um my grandma recently got detected with i'm so glad she's doing okay she started getting out of the hospital tomorrow
exciting and it literally got 50 million views on Twitter her story yeah and there's so many comments out there of just so much stories and so many like people saying My grandma had the same thing. My dad happened the same thing, you know? So I'm sure you hear so many stories like this. And for me, that's the beauty, not only on Apple, but on technology in general.
I love the fact that the Apple Watch is a beautiful watch, that it can do notifications. There's so much to talk about, obviously. But for me, this is what's most important right now in tech. The ability that a device that's on your wrist can really have the potential.
To save your life is just mind-blowing. It is. And every time we hear stories like that, it never gets old. It's amazing because if you think about why a lot of us who work in health... do what we do we do it because of these stories we want to be able to have impact and you know like I went to medical school to become a physician to have an impact on someone's life
What have you not done? But the fact that we can, through watch, detect these conditions of things that happened before it can be really serious.
is amazing to be able to see that at this scale and to have impact on people's lives. And it's really, truly... you know these letters and these stories mean a lot to the teams that work on this because it drives them to do even more and so we're really lucky to be able to share these experiences with our customers and what would you say are like the top three stories that have impacted you
I'm sure all of them, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, some of your favorite ones. So, one of my favorite watch stories is… My grandma. Well, that definitely is the number one story. Maybe number two story is there was a mom who was pregnant and she actually got a high heart rate notification. What ended up happening was she went to the hospital, turned out she had a condition called thyroid storm, and the letter was just moving. For the people in the back.
Thyroid storm. Great question. Thyroid storm is when your thyroid kind of is in overdrive. And so it releases all these hormones into your body. And when you're pregnant... that can actually be very detrimental to the fetus, to the baby. So had she not gotten to the doctor when she did, she would have ended up not just losing her own life, but the baby's life. And so Apple Watch was able to detect this.
detect the high heart rate and that caused her to go to the doctor and she wrote a letter saying thank you for saving me but my child as well. Wow. So that's pretty remarkable. One of my other favorite ones is actually very recently, and now this isn't watched, but this is with our hearing features on AirPods.
Just recently we saw a letter of a dad who wrote in whose daughter had a... had a condition where she has not been able to hear and really struggled with using hearing aids and because of the comfort and the fit of airpods pro 2 she used this and she was able to hear her dad and you know like and music that she hasn't heard in a very long time and it just brought him to tears and those kind of stories are just incredibly funny when we talk about pricing for a product yeah like
when you hear stories like that you can't really price something you can't yeah you can't and the value just goes like off the road just to be able to connect with your loved ones in a way that story was pretty special as well so the apple watch right now tracks a lot of your health But it's obviously got the potential to find certain illnesses or just really big problems with your health. What does Apple think it can do with?
finding certain issues. I mean, a lot of what we focus on with our work with watch and health is because it's on you all the time, the ability to proactively pick up.
conditions before it becomes a problem is a really unique capability and so we kind of call this the intelligent guardian where it's in the background passively picking up things like afib elevated heart rate we just announced sleep apnea detection if you wear your watch overnight we can now notify you of moderate to severe sleep apnea so many people haven't don't know so many people have and don't know about it
The vitals app where you can see all of your vitals in one place that we announced this year. People are picking up, we're already getting letters from people picking up illnesses that they didn't realize they had that developed overnight. And some, fun fact, some, I mean, I'm sure you obviously know this, but some illness are big, some of them are smaller, right? And our producer, for example, he...
knew that he was going to have a cold the next day because his vitals. See, and that's like amazing to me. It's small, but it's like, great. It's a big deal. I probably won't be able to work tomorrow, you know? So he was telling me, look, I'm off work tomorrow. Well, and what's great about that is he was able to stay home and probably didn't get other people.
sick and that's really beneficial so you know long story I mean just I think we we love the fact that we can pick up things before they become issues and we really believe in proactive prevention and trying to keep you healthier longer. And how do we get you to care about your health? before it's an issue and be aware of it and be aware of it and be engaged in it and be at the center of your health and be empowered to move and do the things you need to do to be healthy every day
So you're saying, you're talking a lot about like so many features it has, and obviously the Apple Watch has so many sensors, features, apps, I can detect so much. Do you think that an excess of information can cause this... I can never pronounce this word hypochondriasm. Hypochondriasm. Do you think, like what does Apple do to prevent that? That's a really good question. So one of the things, obviously you know this because you brought this up.
One of the things that we are known for and truly it's the ethos of what we do is design. And all of us who work on these products work with our amazing design teams. And it is truly design that solves some of these issues. And I'll tell you how. We spend a lot of time making sure when we explain something to you, it's understandable. it's easy to comprehend and it's not anxiety provoking so we obsess about that so we actually spend a lot of time thinking about how do we give you a notification
that will motivate you to do something but won't scare you. And so we really think that educating individuals and making people feel empowered. I see that with the health app. Yeah, avoids them from being a hypochondriac. Yeah. And so the more that we can help people realize that it's okay to understand this about yourself and it's okay to get help when you need it, whether it's a mental health issue, whether it's eliminating stigma from hearing issues.
whether it's you know heart issues i think that the how you deliver the information is really important and that's what leads to avoiding those type of issues like hypochondriosis and for me i give the example like when people tell me you know I don't even know if that's a word, hypochondriacism, but being a hypochondriac. I won't judge you, don't worry. You know, there's so much competition out there in the wearable space. We don't have to say names.
but i've tried out products that just give you so much and for me like it's exactly what you're saying the activity rings is a perfect example right it's just close your rings you know it's a very visual very easy to understand recently the vitals app The health app is full of information if you need it. It's there if you want it to. And maybe that's one of the reasons that Apple hasn't released the health app on the watch. I don't know.
That's a product request that I'm waiting for. The Vitals app is a closer step. Noted. But yeah, I feel like Apple does extremely well with that. Yeah, and you're absolutely right. And I think we... We spend a lot of time thinking about when we're going to deliver this information, especially because we're putting...
often scientifically validated information in the palm of an individual's hand. Like we want to make sure that it's really understandable and easy to use. So the science is really important. We don't like delivering data for data's sake. It has to be actionable and an insight that you can do something with. And then obviously we also spend a ton of time on privacy. So we want people to understand that.
Your data is your data. You should expect the same privacy from your technology as you get from your physician, and it's on device. And all of those things are really important. It sounds obvious. Yes. a lot of people don't do which is mind-blowing to me and we spend a ton of time we start there those are the things we start with yeah so i'm sure like there's so much challenges while creating these these products and these services
and features that have the potential to improve people's lives. What are your biggest challenges that you face while creating this new feature, creating this new, just a future that will save someone's life?
The biggest challenges we run into are, and that's part of the fun, to be honest, and it's driving ourselves to be more innovative and pushing ourselves to be even better at what we do. One, you know, it's... translating the physiology in a wrist like at a wrist because you know there's there's limitations just to human physiology of what's available here at the RISC, but how do we push on that to develop more and more features that can tell you more about your health?
I think often one of the challenges we come across is we want to be able to get to do more and more faster, but we want to do it right. And so we always balance making sure that we deliver. scientific accuracy, understandability, but we wish we could do it. You know, we want to get more and more out there, but doing it quickly is sometimes hard, but we always will pick doing it right.
overdoing it quickly and i think if there's anything we always want to get more to our customers sooner and faster so there's always the challenge of how do we push our teams to do more and more given that we have to focus on what's in front of us. And there's so many things we want to do. And I know you are doing one. I have written down. You're currently doing a research on studying, studying depression and anxiety. I've read online. It's out there.
And there's apps out there on the watch that it proves that HRV can detect stress in wearables. So how well do you think this technology can play out for the future? Maybe we could expect something, obviously. Yeah, I mean, we do these research studies. So the study you're referring to is a study we're doing with UCLA.
Beautiful campus. It's a beautiful campus and it's amazing researchers and it's focused on mental health. And really what we want to understand is, is there an intersection with the signals that we get from watch? being able to detect, you know, things like depression and anxiety. And we are measuring it against ground truth, which is what the gold standard is in a clinic. And right now it's it's.
What I love about the work we do is we are researching the science, and if the science leads us to a product, we will obviously work and develop that. That's a good way to do it. But we want to start with the science, and so right now we're excited to see where the research takes us.
for me i've tried out like so much hrv apps and it's exactly what you're saying it kind of like stresses you out even more because it's like you're stressed it's like i know i'm stressed so i'm very curious on what apple could do potentially with this it's very very exciting yeah I've got written down some rapid questions that you just have to answer quickly. Are you ready? Yep. Favorite Apple product? FaceTime. I love that.
Who is the person that you like FaceTime? I love watching my kids FaceTime with their grandparents. It's just really amazing. They've been able to maintain relationships with not being next door, and I think that's pretty remarkable. It reminds me of the iPhone 4 ad. What's the best advice you've ever received? If you are too comfortable, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. Who said that to you?
That I've had said to me, it was actually one of my old medical school professors when I was trying to decide what I wanted to do. Beautiful. Favorite Apple Watch band? Actually, it's a new one that came out, The Gold Link Band. It just came out yesterday, right? Which I don't have yet, yes. But I really want that one. Can you ship one to me? Yeah, exactly. Describe yourself in one word.
Never satisfied. I want to do more. And that's not really one word. So I cheated. But... Never satisfied. That's just kind of one word. Yeah. I just want us to do more and more. And I love pushing myself and being challenged. Can I describe you as someone positive? Yes. I'm positive. 20 minutes. Maybe you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I guess I can say that. Favorite feature in the Apple ecosystem? You technically said it in the beginning.
Well, I'll give you my favorite health feature. I already did one. So I did cardio fitness. I'll do my other favorite health feature. I actually really love our cycle tracking feature. I learned a ton about my own cycles. just by forcing myself to do that and um it actually was very enlightening to me to know that understand that like for example i get chills before my cycles and i used to think i was getting sick
And just being able to make some correlations. And I think that's done that for a lot of people. So I really love that. Apple truly believes in tracking, right? Yeah. Not only cycle tracking. Yeah, we believe in being able to log your data if you want to log your data for your own health. Like the mental health features. Yeah.
The mental health feature is one of my other favorites, yeah. Favorite place to disconnect? And this couch right here is not your favorite place to disconnect. Give me another one. You know, Hawaii is actually my favorite place to disconnect. But Island in particular. That's really hard, but we have a place we go to in Onoahu, and it's just my favorite. My kids love it, and I go for early morning runs there, and it is my favorite place to run ever. What time do you wake up?
I get up about 5.15. Whoa. Yeah. When I'm in Hawaii, I get up earlier. But yeah, I get up early. Yeah. What time do you wake up in Hawaii? You know what it is? Do you sleep? It's because of the time difference. You get up a lot earlier. I go to bed like at 7.38 in Hawaii.
I don't know why, but I get up pretty early anyway. So final questions here. I know you're busy. Yeah. I know you're a firm believer in the importance of finding your voice. What advice would you give to someone that hasn't found? their voice yet. You have to be patient with the fact that you haven't found your voice yet. But you can't give up. Describe what you mean by finding your voice. I know so much about you. Not in a creepy way. No, no, no. I'm flattered, actually.
you know you have to find your own what i mean by finding your own voice is one you have to be authentic to who you are and i think right now in today's world it's easy to see these images of people that aren't truly authentic and being authentic and being real about your strengths and your weaknesses will only make you stronger and making sure you find your voice to advocate for yourself
be present and being at the table and making sure that you're heard because you know a lot of times when you're at in meetings or in settings where you're around really amazing people It's easy to feel like I don't have anything to offer and everyone has something to offer. So having that voice to be able to feel confident to do that. And I think it's really important to be authentic and know that. You know, you may not have found your voice yet because you're still figuring out.
who and where and how you want to show up but have the confidence you'll be able to do that at some point at the right time and you'll know when and the other thing is just ties back to what I said before you have to push yourself to be uncomfortable because It's in that discomfort that growth comes and how you learn to be able to develop to have that strength to speak up and find that voice. What would you say to someone that doesn't have that strength?
I think everyone has that strength. I think it's a little bit of, you know, finding your center and taking time. You know, it's really easy in this world to get lost in the world around you and not find that time to center, which is why I love, you know, like, for example, our state of mind feature and our features that...
actually force you to reflect a bit um but if you take that five ten minutes in the morning to just sit i think everyone can find that within them i really do i feel like for me life happens like so fast I've had like the past seven years of just truly being in the present and being just so happy for what you have. My sister is currently pregnant. It's like life happens so fast and you don't even know about it.
people tell me it gets worse as you grow older and it's so scary so um for me it's just all about just exactly what you said being present and being extremely grateful and you have to remind yourself right for all the blessings that you have and You have to remind yourself exactly what you said, to take it all in. Because it's so easy to get caught up. And all of us, we're all guilty of this. We all get caught up.
You could ask my family before I came on this trip. They're like, wait, it's the same person on that video. But it's. Finding those moments just with a little bit of quiet to reflect I think are incredibly important. I think that's why the most important part of meditating and just stopping is because if you don't do that, you'll never have the opportunity to do that.
And whether it's meditation, whether it's prayer, whether it's reflect, whatever works for you, just take that moment. Yeah. I have one more question for you that I know you won't answer it, but I just have to ask it because of how passionate I am about Apple.
is apple releasing a ring well we never talk about what we're going to do in the future i love that poker face already so um we're really focused on all the amazing products we have in the ecosystem and we want to continue to do great things with that
We love to continue to surprise and delight our customers. If I want to get married, I want to... get my wife just hurry up a bit you know she may not want that ring so you may want to rethink that you don't know i'll give it i'll give her two but i i mean it just makes sense for me that's amazing you don't know how much it means for you to be here. Oh, I can tell. I'm so grateful you took the time. What an honor to meet with you. Thank you very much. Thank you.