Apple's Revolutionary New App Lets You Participate in Medical Studies Through Your iPhone
Apple is joining the fight against a host of debilitating diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and breast cancer, with its new ResearchKit for iOS.
Announced during Apple’s big Apple Watch event, ResearchKit is a piece of software that gives medical researchers the ability to build apps that will help them to better study diseases including Parkinson’s, diabetes, asthma, breast cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
ResearchKit works by giving users the ability to sign up for specific research studies, at which point they perform basic tests. In one example of a test for a Parkinson’s disease study, users tap the screen with two alternating fingers for 20 seconds. Another test has users say “Ah” into the iPhone’s microphone.
ResearchKit is designed so that you always have access to the data being collected and can choose whether to share your information.
Apple said that researchers from institutions including the University of Oxford, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Penn Medicine, Stanford Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medical College are working on apps for ResearchKit.
Apple doesn’t seem to have anything to gain monetarily from ResearchKit. Rather, it looks as though the company is doing this to simply further medical research.
To that end, Apple is making ResearchKit open source, meaning that anyone can access the platform and build apps for it.
During a brief video explaining ResearchKit, medical professionals from a variety of organizations explained how the software platform can help revolutionize medical research by giving millions of iPhone users the ability to participate in a host of studies.
Apple is releasing the first five ResearchKit apps for download today, and the entire platform will be available next month.
If ResearchKit can deliver on even a bit of the promise it offers, it could truly improve the lives of people around the world. Even Android users.
Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley or on Google+ here.
