Sumbul Desai, MD, has our health in her hands. As the vice president of health at Apple, she says anything that touches health at the company, “I’m responsible for.” In layman’s terms that means the period cycles app on your watch and phone, the ECG monitor on your watch, the app that measures your blood oxygen levels…the list goes on. And is likely to get longer. Earlier this year, in February 2025, Apple announced more than $500 billion in investments, which analysts predict will have a profound impact on consumer health—and the advancements Dr. Desai will be able to make in her work. Right now she’s excited about the ongoing rollout of the hearing test and hearing aid functions of the Airpods Pro 2s.
It’s not just the technological advancements that drive her, though. It’s her patients—more than 2 billion Apple users around the world. Her mission? To “empower people to take their own data and use it in a way that can drive better decision-making and advocate for themselves should they have a health issue,” she says.
Personal advocacy, she reiterates, is key, a stance influenced by her own experiences. Desai didn’t start out in medicine. She wanted to be a journalist and started working at ABC News in 2000. But a year later, while she was home visiting her family, her mom had a massive stroke. “She went into a coma right in front of me,” she says. On the advice of doctors, Desai had to learn how to be her mom’s fiercest advocate. She took leave for a year and a half to care for her; when she returned to work, “It just wasn’t the same. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate what I did, but I just wanted to do more. So I went back to medical school when I was 30.”
The rest, as they say, is history. That foundational experience with her mom has been her guide ever since for all her patients’ lives. “I want your relationship with your doctor to be richer,” she explains.
Here, she shares the lessons she’s learned along the way and her tips for making the most of your gadgets.
Glamour: So, we’re opening our watches or our phones—what are the key apps we should be checking from a daily health perspective?
Sumbul Desai: The Health and the Fitness apps are critical. The Health app in particular brings together all of your movement data. If I were to prescribe anything, I always say movement. It also has your heart rate data, your resting heart rate, your VO2 max, your cardio fitness, how much you slept. So I’m understanding what happened last night, and how I can plan my day to improve my next night.
The other ones that I think are really key for women are keeping track of cycles. Symptoms happen throughout the month—they don’t just happen around your cycles—and yet it is all influencing your day-to-day. If there’s something off, that’s when I go to the ECG. I always talk about our health features as being like a snapshot of your life. If it can make your interaction with your doctor more meaningful, we succeeded.
Do you track your own health obsessively?
I absolutely do. If I think I’m getting sick, I really pay attention to my heart rate. My heart rate is so sensitive if I’m dehydrated or if I’m sick, so I will see changes. I’m obsessive about my cardio fitness. I ran my first marathon two years ago, and I’ve been planning on running one this year. And so that’s a big one. HRV [heart rate variability] plays a role for me, too, for training and looking at if you’re overtraining. I pay a lot of attention to my sleep, because my sleep’s a good sign of whether or not things are moving in the right direction. I use the products I make—it’s not lip service.
Talk to us about the hearing work you’re doing.
It’s actually been something we’ve worked on for a number of years, like four or five years. Hearing is such a big part of shaping how we communicate and how we connect. We started with AirPods, introducing some small features, like conversational boost, over the years. And then, when the administration changed legislation around over-the-counter hearing aids, we thought, How powerful would it be if the devices that you listen to music on could also augment your hearing? We actually started testing the hearing test on AirPods and introduced the hearing aid feature. It was the science and design coming together in a really lovely way.
What’s your proudest achievement, professionally or personally?
Professionally, it’s been bringing our engineering design and clinical teams together. ECG was one of our big first accomplishments. When we get letters every day from users telling us that their Apple Watch helped them in some way or another, I feel that we are actually having an impact in a way that I was hoping.
Personally, the thing that I’m probably most proud of is that I’m a working mom with three kids. I’m a big part of my kids’ life as well as my family’s life. I take care of a parent, and I still get to do this amazing job. Sometimes, it’s so easy to put yourself down and feel like you’re not doing enough. But every day that I pull that off, that’s a big achievement, honestly.
What time do you get up?
Usually, 5:50 a.m. I wish I got up at 5:00.
Even the fact that it’s got a 5 in it is inspiring. What’s your typical morning routine if you’re up at 5:50?
The first thing I do is, actually, prayer and meditation. I always take a few minutes to do that to just kind of reflect and be grateful. And then I go downstairs and my coffee is the second thing. My coffee’s number two.
How do you take your coffee?
With cream, and I use monk fruit. I savor my coffee. Those 15 minutes when I drink my coffee, I will listen to the news. I usually listen to CNBC in the morning, and I’ll read a little bit and glance at email. And then I try to get a workout in, depending on the day. My daughter started running recently, so we try to run in the evening together, too, which is throwing a bit of a wrench in my morning routine! And then it kicks off with the kids—making them breakfast, getting them out the door…
What was your dream childhood job?
I had so many growing up! I used to pretend playing being a doctor, but it was actually an architect, to be honest. I was really into Legos, and I loved making houses. If I were to have a second career, I might go in interior design because I love doing that.
What was your first actual job?
I was a book shelver at a library as my first job, and it didn’t work out so well because I would just read in the corner as opposed to putting the books back.
What was the best piece of career advice you’ve ever gotten?
That you have to be comfortable making decisions as a leader. That they may not always make you popular, but you have to make the decisions that matter for your team. I’ve evolved that mantra a little bit to “You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable.” When you get too comfortable, then you’re probably not pushing yourself enough. Discomfort is part of growth, and I’m a really big believer in constantly growing and evolving. Never stop learning. It’s never too late. I always tell people all the time that it’s never too late. You should always be learning throughout your career.
What’s your biggest vice?
I like dessert. I have a sweet tooth, and that is my biggest vice. After every meal, I have to have something a little sweet.
How do you define success for you?
Success for me would be when we finally, in the health world, stop talking about health care as taking care of sick people and actually figure out a way to get people on the trajectory of being healthy. One of my biggest frustrations is that we are trained to focus on preventative health, but we actually don’t deliver it in the health world. And so, if I can do that through the work I do, I think that’s going to be my definition of success.
