Apple has today announced an expansion of ResearchKit into studies for autism, epilepsy and melanoma.
Advertisement
Duke University worked on an autism study.
When users download EpiWatch, they’ll be asked to read information about the study and give a signature to show informed consent; participants must be 16 or older and have both an Apple Watch and an iPhone, Crone said.
The autism project from Duke University are looking to use the front-facing iPhone camera to detect developmental issues in early years of life, detecting a child’s emotional response to specific videos. ResearchKit has already helped studies on asthma, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and more. The data gathered by the app, including physiological changes, altered responsiveness and other characteristics of recurrent seizures, will be used by researchers to develop new methods for monitoring and managing epilepsy through technology.
And this is important as only big consumer electronics companies have enough reach to work on this kind of large-scale data-intensive studies – there are hundreds of millions of iOS devices now in use around the world, so even if a tiny percentage of this user base signs up to ResearchKit studies, it will have a meaningful impact on medical research. The app also helps participants manage their disorder by tracking their medication adherence and by screening for side effects, while allowing participants to compare their condition with others in the research study. Researchers can then use the data to train an algorithm that they hope will help predict when patients will have a seizure, Crone said.
Apple will work with leading universities and research centers including Duke University, John Hopkins, and Oregon Health & Science University. The goal is to use the data to help create detection algorithms which can be used to help screen for melanoma in the future.
Advertisement
“Melanoma is the poster child for early detection”. Chair of Dermatology and Director, Melanoma Research Program, at the Knight Cancer Institute. Now, ResearchKit can help you create tasks to study hearing loss, reaction time to a stimulus, walk tests, memory tests and more. “ResearchKit makes this easier than ever with the development of a simple iPhone app”. Additional contributions to the ResearchKit framework include iPad® support, image capture and the ability to add pie charts, line graphs and discrete graphs for more detailed dashboards.
