Everyone has been talking about the revelations at the Apple Watch event. From major TV steaming services to a new generation of smart watch, there are plenty of hot tech headlines being made.
While we all love to hear about new ways to stay entertained and informed through technology, your personal tech device could soon play a role in keeping you abreast of your current state of health and risks that compromise it. It may even serve to aid medical research and development.
Through a new open-source framework that would allow medical professionals to create diagnostic and health monitoring apps, Apple’s ResearchKit may revolutionize the way we keep and eye on our health and how medical diagnostic processes are completed.
By working with the touch screen and accelerometers already built into the device, its possible to complete preliminary diagnostic tests for certain disorders and collect the resulting data. There are already five apps available for use with iPhones.
Apple Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams detailed some of the specialized applications available at launch. They include the mPower app, which is built to gauge the effects of Parkinsons’ Disease and was developed in conjunction with the University of Rochester, Xuanwu Hospital at Capital Medical University in Beijing, and Sage Bionetworks.
While you shouldn’t expect to forego a checkup in favor of running a few iPhone apps, the new ResearchKit and upcoming diagnostic apps, may improve medical research overall, and may encourage patients to participate in regular care and treatment of disease in a more active way.
It’s also hoped that the ResearchKit apps will improve data sampling for purposes of medical research and foster more effective communication between patients and health providers.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s ResearchKit announcement may reignite discussions over privacy in the digital age (all data shared by each ResearchKit app is said to be user controlled and hidden from Apple).
Click the below link to learn more about the privacy issue and to watch the video.
Is The Medical Diagnostic Tool Of The Future In Your Pocket Right Now?
However, there’s promising potential in making diagnostics and health insights more accessible to the average person. Obtaining health data that’s more consistent and obtained for a broader population—especially when you consider that iPhone users number in the hundreds of millions—could lead to a better understanding of disease and more effective methods of detection and treatment.
Would you be eager to complete diagnostic medical tests using your smart phone? Do you think such capabilities would make you more health conscious? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Article Sources:
http://www.wired.com
