Apple’s decision to simplify the watch speaks to a larger issue facing makers of wearables: Advanced biotracking sensors would have made the Apple Watch less of a multipurpose consumer device and more of a medical device used to diagnose diseases or track chronic conditions — which could have opened the watch up to regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“I don’t think Apple wants to be a health-monitoring device maker,” said Harry Wang, director of health and mobile product research at Parks Associates. “They do want to leverage their popularity on the iPhone as a device platform, integrating all health data that can be collected for different devices.”

That information is being gathered through Apple’s new Health app, a dashboard of users’ health data, and HealthKit, a developer tool that lets wellness apps share data. The watch could be populated with messages from external devices and services that track specialized health information.

From the article "The Apple Watch Has Gotten Simpler, But That’s OK" by Stephanie M. Lee.

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