Apple Introduces ResearchKit

Apple Introduces ResearchKit
Categories: News

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Scientific and medical research is currently restrictive in sample size and is often carried out on small groups of volunteers and is slow, costly and cumbersome. It is 2015 and that needs to change, the future is here, and researchers need access to sources of Big Data. Enter Apple and their new ResearchKit initiative. Apple wants to turn iPhones into devices that collect scientific data straight from volunteers’ pockets from around the world.

ResearchKit, is a new open source software framework designed for medical and health research, that was announced this Spring. The concept behind it is that doctors and researchers can use the framework to build apps that will use iPhones sensors to gather accurate data from volunteers.

Apple is trying to create studies about asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Parkinson' disease, and more. Participation is purely voluntary but the goal is for ResearchKit to become a powerful tool for medical research.

What is ResearchKit?

ResearchKit is an open source software framework, and what that means is that you won't ever have to come face-to-face with ResearchKit. It's a set of building tools for app developers, giving them the ability to create research apps.

ResearchKit expands upon the Health app and HealthKit, which was also a framework that allowed app developers to create heatlh and fitness based apps for the iPhone. Researchkit works in conjunction with HealthKit and accesses sensors in the iPhone, including the accelerometer, microphone, gyroscope, and GPS sensors, in order to gain insight into your gait, motor impairment, fitness, speech, memory, and more.

The most important thing that ResearchKit provides is a data on a scale that has never before been possible. Data that transcends location to provide unprecedented numbers of participants in studies.

Apple has already highlighted a few of the first apps based on its new ResearchKit framework, and here they are:

  1. MyHeart Counts - By Stanford University
  2. Asthma Health - By Mount Sinai
  3. GlucoSuccess - By The Massachusetts General Hospital
  4. Breast Cancer: Share the Journey study - By Sage Bionetworks
  5. Parkinson mPower study app - By Sage Bionetworks

IBM Watson Health

IBM has just introduced IBM Watson Health, this is a new analytics platform based on IBM' Watson computer and aimed at advancing health and wellness. This new initiative includes HealthCloud, a HIPAA-compliant cloud that IBM is hoping will be used by doctors, researchers to analyse the plethora of data that will be available. IBM are partnering with Apple to enable the platform' support for data from iOS apps that use HealthKit and ResearchKit.

The Future

This is the future of large scale research, as smartphones get more widespread and their sensors become more complex, the health industry can use Big Data to provide better and more accurate patient care. Research that has previously been based on several hundred volunteers can now include thousands of participants, for better and more accurate information.

One thing to note is that ResearchKit based apps are only currently available in the US, but Apple have said that they plan on bringing the framework to more countries in the future.

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