CareKit is an open source software platform, which helps developers create healthcare apps with tracking and sharing capabilities built right in.
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CareKit follows the model of Apple’s successful ResearchKit platform for clinical trials, which was launched in 2015 and is now being used in dozens of ongoing projects, primarily targeting chronic conditions and population health, in the US and several countries.
First is the “Care Card” that will assist users in keeping a check on their medication schedule as well as complete physical therapy routines. Recorded symptoms can be mapped against glucose levels, and all of this can be shared with a doctor easily.
Iodine designed Start to give users more power over what is often a painful trial-and-error process, as one in three antidepressant medications don’t work for a given individual, Goetz said. “If you have chronic medical conditions, [like] heart rhythm failure, this is an important matter because the management of that condition could be critical to avoiding hospitalizations”, said Dr. Eric Topol, Cardiologist and Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute.
Overall, the early CareKit adopters were optimistic about the framework, but mostly for the opportunity it could provide to unite different stakeholders around the idea of patient empowerment. “I think of CareKit as part of this movement toward arming consumers with more information about their health and putting the power in their hands”. With any luck far more apps will start taking advantage of it soon, allowing people with all kinds of conditions to better monitor, track and share them.
CareKit has four central features, called “modules”.
Apple says it wanted to help developers build easy-to-use apps for patients to record symptoms, get useful information, track their progress and even send reports to a doctor.
With CareKit and the four apps making their debut, Apple has not firmly taken its first step into health care and the electronic applications of its software development on the medical front. It allows the integration of four health management “modules” into an app. “The last two are used for communicating with a person’s health team, and providing users with insight into how well a treatment is working based on their own answers and their progress over time”.
“I think the game-changing aspect of CareKit is what it represents for the future”, Dasich said.
A report published in Tech Crunch revealed, “Carekit works in a similar way to Apple’s Researchkit, a tool enabling developers to pull in large amounts of research data over iOS devices”.
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CareKit, announced last month, is a new toolkit that enables developers to build apps that help users to actively manage their medical conditions, rather than just monitoring them. Apps like the ones above are private, secure, and easy to update and share data.
