Apple makes ResearchKit open source

From the mHealthNews archive

April 15, 2015

10:23 am

Apple has opened up its ResearchKit platform to the public.

By making the framework available to the open-source community, officials hope that medical researchers all over the world will develop their own apps and contribute new research modules.

Company officials say more than 60,000 people have enrolled in five research programs that were announced in conjunction with ResearchKit's launch last month. Those programs, built around the first five apps designed for the platform, target breast cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

“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,” Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations, said in a press release. “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.”

Along with the open source announcement, Apple unveiled three customizable modules:

Participant consent - allows researchers to access an e-consent template that can be customized to explain the study and collect signatures. A researcher can also include elements such as videos explaining the study and a quiz to confirm a participant’s understanding.
Surveys - offers a user interface to customize questions for study participants to complete and immediately share with researchers.
Active Tasks - enables researchers to invite participants to perform activities that generate data using the iPhone’s sensors – such as tasks to measure motor activities, fitness, cognition and voice. The open source framework will enable researchers to contribute their own active tasks to ResearchKit.

Among the early fans of ResearchKit is Ricky Bloomfield, MD, Director of Mobile Technology Strategy and Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine & Pediatrics at Duke University.

“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,” he said in the release. “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,” added 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.”