Apple® today announced ResearchKit™, a software framework designed for
medical and health research that helps doctors, scientists and other
researchers gather data more frequently and more accurately from
participants using mobile devices, is now available to researchers and
developers. The first research apps developed using ResearchKit study
asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s
disease, and have enrolled over 60,000 iPhone® users in just the first
few weeks of being available on the App Store™.* Starting today, medical
researchers all over the world will be able to use ResearchKit to
develop their own apps and developers can also contribute new research
modules to the open source framework.
“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 Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of
Operations. “Medical researchers all over the world are actively
exploring how ResearchKit can help them study even more diseases, and we
believe the impact on global understanding of health and wellness will
be profound.”
The open source framework allows any medical researcher to take
advantage of the initial modules in ResearchKit to study health and
wellness and better understand disease. Developers can also build
new modules based on the open source code and contribute them to
ResearchKit. The initial customizable modules address the most common
elements found in research studies—participant consent, surveys
and active tasks.
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Participant consent: Participant consent is a critical element to
research studies, and with ResearchKit researchers can access a visual
e-consent template that can be customized to explain the details
of the study and obtain participant signatures. This module makes it
easy for the researcher to include elements such as video segments
explaining the study and an interactive quiz to confirm
the participant’s understanding.
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Surveys: The survey module provides a pre-built user interface that
makes it easy to customize questions and answers for study
participants to complete and immediately share with researchers.
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Active Tasks: The Active Task module enables researchers to gather
more targeted data for their study by inviting participants to perform
activities that generate data using iPhone’s advanced sensors. Initial
Active Task modules include tasks to measure motor activities,
fitness, cognition and voice, and with the framework available as open
source, the research community can contribute even more active tasks
to ResearchKit.
“ResearchKit could help us reach people all over the world who are
willing to contribute to medical research, but might not know how or be
able to get involved,” said Ricky Bloomfield, Director of
Mobile Technology Strategy and Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine
& Pediatrics at Duke University. “Our team of researchers is now
launching the development of an exciting new study using the
ResearchKit framework, which will enable us to gather data quickly, from
more participants than we are typically able to reach.”
“Because of the ubiquity of iPhone and the elegant implementation of
consent, survey and instrumented data collection, ResearchKit has
enormous promise for leading the transformation of how we
engage patients in research,” said Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, of the Boston
Children’s Hospital Informatics Program. “Now that we have access to the
ResearchKit framework, our team can start customizing the
initial modules and even design new ones for our particular study.”
ResearchKit turns iPhone into a powerful tool for medical research. When
granted permission by the participant, ResearchKit apps can access data
from advanced iPhone sensors like the accelerometer, gyroscope,
microphone and GPS to gain insight into a participant’s activity levels,
motor impairments, memory and more. ResearchKit works seamlessly with
HealthKit™, a software framework Apple introduced with iOS 8 to provide
developers the ability for health and fitness apps to communicate with
each other. 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, which are measured by third-party
devices and apps.
For more information on ResearchKit, visit www.apple.com/researchkit and
for details on how to access the open source framework, visit www.researchkit.org.
*ResearchKit apps are available on the App Store in the US at www.appstore.com/researchkit and
will be rolling out to more countries in the future. iPhone 5, iPhone
5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and the latest generation of iPod touch®
support ResearchKit apps.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with
OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital
music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple
has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App
Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices
with iPad.
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Copyright Business Wire 2015