Apple has plans to build an app to diagnose Parkinson's disease and two separate but related cardiac devices, the website MobiHealthNews has reported, based on emails exchanged between the company and the US Food and Drug Administration.
The emails were obtained by the website through a Freedom of Information request.
The correspondence showed that the FDA and Apple had discussed the way apps are reviewed before they are put up on the App Store, the software framework ResearchKit, diagnostic apps and working with the FDA in an "unregulated" way.
Apple had one publicised meeting with the FDA in 2013 before the Apple Watch was released. It was after this, that a decision was taken to keep future meetings off the radar.
{loadposition sam08}Discussions about the Parkinson's app began in August 2015. The emails show that it is separate from the existing Apple ResearchKit and CareKit Parkinson's apps.
The cardiac devices came up for discussion in July, but few details about the kind of device were found in the emails.
However, in an interview with the Telegraph in 2015, Apple chief executive Tim Cook hinted that a regulated medical device made by the company could take the form factor of a combination of the Apple Watch and a modular strap.
And in August, the website Patently Apple reported on the company's patent for a wearable device that measured electrocardiographic signals.