Imagine that you are in the gym. Your workout is going great and you do exercise after exercise. Suddenly your iPhone starts zooming. “Your heartbeat is going too fast. Take a rest before you start with the next exercise”. Soon, this will be reality. In the close future, your iPhone will give you personal health advise on the basis of data that the mobile phone gathers.
Apple has already introduced the HealthKit app. So far, this app mostly functioned as a tracker of data (e.g. heartbeat, sleep patterns etc), but it will be used eventually to interpret these data in order to turn it into advice for users, doctors and scientists. The HealthKit will become a valuable health data source via the ResearchKit and the CareKit. Apps created with ResearchKit are producing medical insights and discoveries at an enormously pace and scale, solely meant for research. These apps make it easier for healthcare to filter important information from large amounts of data. The success of these apps has led to the widening of the scope to personal care; the CareKit. The CareKit helps you to manage your own well being on a daily basis. You can manage your own health, as tools are created that track for example your symptoms and medications, which are subsequently shared with the care team. Dr. Ray Dorsey from University of Rochester states the following: “We are trying to bring care to patients, wherever they are, right on their phones”.
The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, wants to secure new sources of revenue. The introduction of the HealthKit and looking at the features is will have in the close future, will make customers more dependent on the Apple devices. Each clinical study performed with the use of the ResearchKit brings Apple a step closer to embedding itself in the global healthcare industry. An example of such a clinical study is Duke University that developed a ResearchKit app that screens for and diagnoses autism by kids at a young age, by using the iPhone’s front facing camera that conducts facial recognition checks.
Apple’s greatest hurdle for now is to prove to medical professionals that the gathered data through these apps is reliable. If they succeed, will your iPhone turn out to be your doctor eventually?
Sources:
https://developer.apple.com/healthkit/
http://www.apple.com/researchkit/
http://www.nu.nl/internet/4327371/apple-gaat-adviezen-opstellen-basis-van-gezondheidsdata-healthkit.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/apple-said-to-expand-healthkit-from-tracker-to-diagnosis-tool