Apple’s unveiling of ResearchKit was one of the biggest surprises at event in March. The software framework is designed to help doctors and scientists with medical and health research, and starting today, Apple is opening up ResearchKit to everyone.
The first five ResearchKit apps that study asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease already enrolled over 60,000 iPhone users in the first few weeks. Now medical researchers all over the world will be able to tap into the same software that researchers at Stanford and Oxford University used to develop their medical apps.
“We are delighted and encouraged by the response to ResearchKit from the medical and research community and the participants contributing to medical research. Studies that historically attracted a few hundred participants are now attracting participants in the tens of thousands,” said Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, Jeff Williams.
Researchers can now use ResearchKit framework that comes with pre-built modules to make it easy to create consent forms, customize questions and answers for surveys, and gather data by having participants perform tasks that are analyzed by the iPhone’s advanced sensors.
Once granted permission by participants, ResearchKit apps can access a range of data from your accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and GPS to assess a participant’s activity levels, motor impairments, memory and more. To start creating your own medical study, or to learn more about ResearchKit, head over to Apple’s new landing page and get to download.
