Apple Watches offered by Apple in grant program to qualifying ResearchKit and CareKit proj...

AppleInsider

Apple will be launching an "Apple Watch Limited Grant Program" later in 2019 to help institutions wanting to use the ResearchKit and CareKit frameworks, among a series of changes to the platforms designed to encourage more health research to be performed.

Announced during the "ResearchKit and CareKit Reimagined" session at WWDC 2019, Apple software engineer Srinath Tupil Muralidharan advised Apple regularly received questions from researchers about how to get started with the platforms. In some cases, Apple was also offered proposals from research institutions that asked for hardware grants.

For 2019, Apple is launching the "Apple Watch Limited Grant Program," part of an Investigator Support Pilot being developed by the iPhone maker. Live in the fall, the program will reportedly include a simple submission process, and will prioritize studies that "advance science and help people to live healthier lives by leveraging" the Apple ecosystem.

A redesign of the ResearchKit and CareKit website is also in the works for the fall, which will contain more information about the frameworks. Readers will also be able to gain insights from existing users of ResearchKit and CareKit, and get more details about the Investigator Support program.

The program arrives along with numerous changes to both the ResearchKit and CareKit platforms.

ResearchKit will gain changes to the user interface, including elements such as an updated progress indicator, "Learn More" buttons, an increased use of content images, and other questionnaire changes. There are also new items relating to visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, including the Landolt C Acuity Task, Tumbling E, and the Gabor Patch, which take advantage of the TrueDepth camera to make sure the user is the correct distance from the screen.

Updates to the speech and hearing tasks are also included, checking items such as jitter and shimmer in a person's voice and tone audiometry.

CareKit has been updated to version 2.0, which brings with it a new user interface.

A major element is the separation of the framework into two sections, consisting of the CareKit UI itself and the CareKit Store, the latter being the on-device database. By separating the two elements, this now allows apps to be able to use the new elements included in the CareKit UI without necessarily having to use the CareKit Store, a design change that could help boost the privacy of the user's data.

The updated SDKs for ResearchKit and CareKit are now available on GitHub, with a stable release expected by September.

jbdragon

The Apple Watch continues to leap further in the lead with their watch.

AppleExposed

GREAT. Would love for AppleWatch to be mandated in health companies.

GeorgeBMac

Yeh for us!   This will help to open MUCH needed medical HealthCare research.

Historically healthcare research has been controlled and dominated by industry:  the Medical, Pharmaceutical and Food (meat, dairy, fast food, processed foods, etc.) industries.   And, they have used research to support their own industry ("You need your protein", "Milk builds strong bones", and the now popular Atkins Diet clones) all the while pushing medicalized solutions to unhealthy lifestyles.  

The food industry gets rich poisoning us while the medical industry gets rich treating the diseases the food industry caused!   

To get away with that, they base their marketing on reductionist research techniques to measure individual parameters (like glucose or cholesterol) using highly designed (but very limited) Randomize Controlled Trials ("RCTs") -- which are essentially laboratory science.   And, they have convinced the medial community that nothing but an RCT is a valid study.

Slick!   They use their money and power to distort science to promote their own profit and well being at the expense of ours.

But, things like iPhones, Apple Watches, Research Kit and CareKit open up to valid, objective observational and epidemiological studies that observe the effects of different parameters applied to large numbers of real people doing real things over long stretches of time -- because they can generate and accumulate objective data in real time:   For example:  They can record food intake meal by meal or exercise duration and intensity as it happens and accumulate all that at virtually no cost in a central database for later analysis.

This was never before possible.

These mobile products combined with cloud based computing can revolutionize health care research and shake the very foundations that our DiseaseManagement system relies on to take in $3.5 Trillion a year.

And, these grants from Apple will further that process by opening up real research using real people doing real things to smaller, less well funded researchers.

Thank You Apple!

JWSC

GeorgeBMac said:

Yeh for us!   This will help to open MUCH needed medical HealthCare research.

Historically healthcare research has been controlled and dominated by industry:  the Medical, Pharmaceutical and Food (meat, dairy, fast food, processed foods, etc.) industries.   And, they have used research to support their own industry ("You need your protein", "Milk builds strong bones", and the now popular Atkins Diet clones) all the while pushing medicalized solutions to unhealthy lifestyles.  

The food industry gets rich poisoning us while the medical industry gets rich treating the diseases the food industry caused!   

To get away with that, they base their marketing on reductionist research techniques to measure individual parameters (like glucose or cholesterol) using highly designed (but very limited) Randomize Controlled Trials ("RCTs") -- which are essentially laboratory science.   And, they have convinced the medial community that nothing but an RCT is a valid study.

Slick!   They use their money and power to distort science to promote their own profit and well being at the expense of ours.

But, things like iPhones, Apple Watches, Research Kit and CareKit open up to valid, objective observational and epidemiological studies that observe the effects of different parameters applied to large numbers of real people doing real things over long stretches of time -- because they can generate and accumulate objective data in real time:   For example:  They can record food intake meal by meal or exercise duration and intensity as it happens and accumulate all that at virtually no cost in a central database for later analysis.

This was never before possible.

These mobile products combined with cloud based computing can revolutionize health care research and shake the very foundations that our DiseaseManagement system relies on to take in $3.5 Trillion a year.

And, these grants from Apple will further that process by opening up real research using real people doing real things to smaller, less well funded researchers.

Thank You Apple!

While there’s clearly a lot we do not agree on, I believe your observations of the medical, pharmaceutical and food industries are spot on.  Apple may be just the interlocutor we need to slowly nudge bias out of research studies.  But its hard when so much money is at stake and the major players have no incentive to change.  It’s going to be interesting to watch (was that a pun...).

GeorgeBMac

JWSC said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Yeh for us!   This will help to open MUCH needed medical HealthCare research.

Historically healthcare research has been controlled and dominated by industry:  the Medical, Pharmaceutical and Food (meat, dairy, fast food, processed foods, etc.) industries.   And, they have used research to support their own industry ("You need your protein", "Milk builds strong bones", and the now popular Atkins Diet clones) all the while pushing medicalized solutions to unhealthy lifestyles.  

The food industry gets rich poisoning us while the medical industry gets rich treating the diseases the food industry caused!   

To get away with that, they base their marketing on reductionist research techniques to measure individual parameters (like glucose or cholesterol) using highly designed (but very limited) Randomize Controlled Trials ("RCTs") -- which are essentially laboratory science.   And, they have convinced the medial community that nothing but an RCT is a valid study.

Slick!   They use their money and power to distort science to promote their own profit and well being at the expense of ours.

But, things like iPhones, Apple Watches, Research Kit and CareKit open up to valid, objective observational and epidemiological studies that observe the effects of different parameters applied to large numbers of real people doing real things over long stretches of time -- because they can generate and accumulate objective data in real time:   For example:  They can record food intake meal by meal or exercise duration and intensity as it happens and accumulate all that at virtually no cost in a central database for later analysis.

This was never before possible.

These mobile products combined with cloud based computing can revolutionize health care research and shake the very foundations that our DiseaseManagement system relies on to take in $3.5 Trillion a year.

And, these grants from Apple will further that process by opening up real research using real people doing real things to smaller, less well funded researchers.

Thank You Apple!

While there’s clearly a lot we do not agree on, I believe your observations of the medical, pharmaceutical and food industries are spot on.  Apple may be just the interlocutor we need to slowly nudge bias out of research studies.  But its hard when so much money is at stake and the major players have no incentive to change.  It’s going to be interesting to watch (was that a pun...).

<Blush!>

I feel like Dr McCoy when Mr Spock finally admitted that he was right about something!

But,

"A study showed" that the single biggest determinant of the outcome of a study was who funded the study.

That suggests that "we" could save a lot of money by skipping the expensive study and just asking the drug company or the food company what it was they wanted us to do and believe.