Last week Apple's CEO Tim Cook talked up the company's ambitions in the health-care sector by hinting that it will move beyond wellness apps and devices, like its step-tracking Apple Watch. Cook acknowledged at the company's annual shareholders meeting in Cupertino, California, that the health-care sector, which is notoriously complex, doesn't always encourage new players to innovate. The CNBC report further noted that Cook reassured shareholders that he views Apple as having a "great position," in the sector, by taking a more consumer-friendly approach. Today a new report states that Apple's move into health care could be a game changer.

Wired believes that Cook's announcement "portends great things for consumers and the app developers seeking to serve them, from our perspectives as the former US chief technology officer under President Obama, and as an early adopter of the Apple service as Rush University Medical Center's chief information officer. That's because Apple has committed to an open API for health care records—specifically, the Argonaut Project specification of the HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources—so your doctor or hospital can participate with little extra effort.

This move is a game-changer for three reasons: It affirms there is one common path to open up electronic health records data for developers so they can focus on delighting consumers rather than chasing records. It encourages other platform companies to build on that path, rather than pursue proprietary systems. And it ensures that the pace of progress will accelerate as healthcare delivery systems respond to the aggregate demand of potentially millions of iPhone users around the world.

Spurred on by financial incentives in the 2009 Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act and in 2015, the bipartisan Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, providers are implementing health IT systems that are certified to meet certain government requirements.

One such mandate is to allow patients the ability to connect any application of their choice, like Apple Health, to a portion of their records via an API. However, the government left room for the private sector to build consensus on how to achieve this requirement, which resulted in the Argonaut Project specification."

The Wired report further noted: "Imagine if Apple further opens up Apple Health so it no longer serves as the destination, but a conduit for a patient's longitudinal health record to a growing marketplace of applications that can help guide consumers through decisions to better manage their health." For more on this, check out the full Wired report here.

Apple also has a few patents on the health care front. Patently Apple covered one in a report posted last August titled "A Secret Health Care System Designed for a Future iPhone Surfaced today at the U.S. Patent Office as a Granted Patent," with two of the Patent figures noted below.

Another patent was covered just last Thursday titled "Apple Patent Reveals a Vital Signs Monitoring System Integrated into a Bedding Mat."

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