Apple ' s iPhone and Watch Function as Medical Research Tools

As someone who is currently participating in an Apple/University of Michigan research study, I have a front row seat to a project that combines an iPhone, Apple Watch, and a blood pressure monitor to gather data. I have referred to this home-based technology as awearable health ecosystem (WHE) (see:The Evolution of"Wearable Health Ecosystems" and Associated Partnerships). A recent article in the NYT delved into the emerging Apple role in medical research (see:Apple ’s Reach Reshapes Medical Research). Below is an excerpt from it: ....[The] Harvard school [recently] announced an...ambitious women ’s health study, one that aims to enroll a million women over a decade....To enroll in clinical trials, patients [normally] have often had to travel to medical centers to be briefed by researchers and fill out the study paperwork in person. Many studies also follow patients only intermittently, in periodic surveys and visits to hospitals.....[Apple] has developed a research app for iPhones — which participants can download from its app store — that is helping researchers quickly and easily recruit hundreds of thousands of study volunteers. Researchers at Stanford Medicine, who studied whether an app on the Apple Watch could detect an irregular heartbeat condition, were able to enroll more than 400,000 participants in just eight months....[D]octors...[do] not yet know whether monitoring people en masse through smartphones and consumer-wearable devices would significan...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Health Wearable Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Population Health Public Health Test Kits and Home Testing Source Type: blogs