The Apple Watch grabbed most of the headlines when it launched on March 9th. But for the scientific community, the company's new ResearchKit product is probably the more interesting development.
ResearchKit lets scientists more easily write apps for Apple’s operating systems—including apps that would let large numbers of iPhone owners contribute to crowd-sourced medical research.
Researchers at New York City’s Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College have already used ResearchKit in collaboration with a company called LifeMap Solutions to create the Asthma Health app to gather data from asthma sufferers.
According to Apple, ResearchKit has also already been used to write apps for collecting info on breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. These apps can take advantage of the iPhone’s many built-in sensors for collecting data, including the accelerometer, microphone, gyroscope and GPS. Asthma Health supposedly uses GPS data, combined with info about local air quality, to point out locations that asthma sufferers should avoid. And what’s called the mPower app for Parkinson’s uses the gyroscope to measure dexterity and gait stability.
Apple did not say whether its new watch could be integrated with ResearchKit. But the device was touted as being able to measure the wearer’s heart rate. So medical researchers will no doubt keep watching the watch.
—Larry Greenemier
