The Apple Watch got the lion’s share of attention when the company unveiled several new products Monday. But a lot of people in the health care industry are going to be interested in ResearchKit, which the Apple describes as a “powerful tool for medical research.”
Through ResearchKit, you can opt to use several iPhone apps to share health data – like weight, blood pressure, glucose levels and asthma inhaler use – with doctors and scientists. A huge benefit is that it allows researchers to recruit participants for large-scale studies.
So far, researchers at UCLA have developed an app with ResearchKit for breast cancer, called Share the Journey: Mind, Body and Wellness after Breast Cancer.
“I think it has some real value for taking research to a new level,” says Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla and author of “The Patient Will See You Now,” which analyzes how technology is changing medicine.
