Filip Novotny One of the surprises of this year's first Apple presentation was the unveiling of the research platform ResearchKit. This will allow users to monitor their health status (for example, when it comes to heart disease, asthma or diabetes) and the data obtained will then be able to be used by doctors and researchers. Apple's new SDK appeared seemingly out of nowhere, however, as she revealed story server Fusion, his birth was preceded by long preparations.
It all started in September 2013 at a lecture by dr. Stephen Friend of Stanford. A prominent American physician spoke that day about the future of health research and his idea of an open collaboration between patients and researchers. The goal was to be a cloud platform where people could upload their health data and doctors could then use it in their study.
One of the listeners at Friend's lecture was also dr. Michael O'Reilly, then a fresh Apple employee. He left his senior position at Masimo Corporation, which makes medical monitoring devices. He came to Apple to combine popular products with a new way of medical research. But he couldn't say that openly to Friend.
"I can't tell you where I work and I can't tell you what I do, but I need to talk to you," O'Reilly said in typical Apple fashion. As Stephen Friend recalls, he was impressed by O'Reilly's words and agreed to a follow-up meeting.
Shortly after that meeting, Friend began making frequent visits to Apple's headquarters to meet with scientists and engineers. The company started focusing on ResearchKit. The goal was to enable scientists to create applications according to their ideas that would facilitate their work and bring them new data.
At the same time, Apple allegedly did not interfere at all in the development of the applications themselves, it only devoted itself to the preparation of developer tools. Employees from American universities and other research facilities thus had full control over how they would obtain user data and how they would handle it.
Even before starting work within ResearchKit, they had to make an important decision - with which company to enter a similar project. In his words, Stephen Friend initially did not like the Cupertino concept of open software (open-source), but on the contrary, he recognized Apple's strict approach to the protection of user data.
He knew that with Google or Microsoft there would be a risk that sensitive information would get into the hands not only of health workers, but also of private companies for hefty commissions. Apple, on the other hand, has already stated several times (including through the mouth of Tim Cook) that users are not a product for it. He does not want to make money by selling data for advertising or other purposes, but by selling hardware and software services.
The result of the efforts of the team around Michael O'Reilly and Stephen Friend is (for now) five applications for iOS. Each of them was created in a different medical facility and deals with cardiovascular problems, breast cancer, Parkinson's disease, asthma and diabetes. Applications have already recorded thousands of registrations from users, but are currently only available in the United States.
The goal was to enable scientists to create their own applications that… >> The goal was to enable scientists to create ***their*** applications that…