Apple's latest addition to its health team is M. Osman Akhtar, COO of the nonprofit hospital network Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services, who resigned in late August to pursue an opportunity "outside of traditional healthcare," CNBC reports.
Mr. Akhtar will work with Sumbul Desai, MD, the former executive director of the Stanford (Calif.) Medicine Center for Digital Health, who joined Apple in 2017. Dr. Desai has been staffing up Apple's employee medical clinics, known as AC Wellness, although Mr. Akhtar may also be involved with other projects.
Since 2017, Mr. Akhtar has been in charge of running Fairview's operations. Prior to that, he spent eight years at Sutter Health in San Francisco, but he began his career in health administration at Stanford University.
Apple has added more than 40 people to its health team in the past three months, including nurses, physicians and care navigators. The iPhone maker has also brought on technologists and regulatory experts to develop medical features on the Apple Watch, including its new ECG sensor to be released later this year.