Ondrej Holzman The announcement of the new ResearchKit healthcare platform may not seem so important at first glance, but Apple's entry into the world of health research may play a significant role in the healthcare field in the coming years.
According to Apple COO Jeff Williams, who appeared at the keynote for the first time, there are "hundreds of millions of iPhone owners who would love to contribute to the research."
On their own iPhone, users will be able to contribute to research related to Parkinson's disease, just by sending measured values and symptoms to health centers. Another application, which together with the other four will be available from Apple, also solves the problem of asthma.
Apple has pledged that it will not collect any data from people, and at the same time users will choose when and what information they want to share with whom. At the same time, the Californian company wants to ensure that as many people as possible are involved in research, so it will provide its ResearchKit as open source.
Today, Apple has already shown a number of renowned partners, among which are, for example University of Oxford, Stanford Medicine or Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. We won't know exactly how everything will work until the new platform is up and running, but once someone participates in research through it, they will likely be sending their measured data like blood pressure, weight, glucose level, etc. to just contracted partners and medical facilities.
If Apple's new research platform expands, it will especially benefit medical centers, for which it is often very difficult to get people interested in clinical trials. But thanks to ResearchKit, it shouldn't be so difficult for potential interested parties to participate, they just need to fill in certain information on the iPhone and send it wherever needed.
Definitely a thumbs up for this.
yes, I agree. not much for healthy people, but it can help sick people
It's nice, but what if they can't measure anything except the heart rate? Do they think that, for example, a cardiologist will take a picture of his EKG and send it to someone?
I find it a bit unclear in the applications and there are too many questions and tests, dear SETI, who can calculate on Android etc. I would prefer something like that.