Apple announced today it has released ResearchKit – a software framework designed to help doctors and other researchers gather health data from patients using mobile devices – to medical researchers worldwide. Apps developed with ResearchKit to study asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease have already enrolled 60,000 iPhone users.
Apple is hopeful that making the open source framework publicly available will expand researchers’ ability to recruit patients for studies and greatly increase the frequency and accuracy of data collected from individual patients. “Studies that historically attracted a few hundred participants are now attracting participants in the tens of thousands,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations. ResearchKit apps access data from iPhone sensors like the accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone and GPS to gain insight into a participant’s activity levels, motor impairments, memory and more. ResearchKit also works with iOS 8’s HealthKit health and fitness apps – with permission from the participant, ResearchKit apps can access and use data from the Health app such as weight, blood pressure, glucose levels and asthma inhaler use.