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ResearchKit gives medical researchers new tools to serve patients

Punchkick Interactive
  • Punchkick Interactive
  • March 18, 2015
ResearchKit gives medical researchers new tools to serve patients

Alongside major announcements for its MacBook line and long-awaited details about the Apple Watch, Apple gave precious air time during its media event last week to introduce a new framework called ResearchKit. On the heals of HealthKit, Apple’s development framework for iOS that tracks and shares fitness and health data across apps, ResearchKit seeks to make medical research studies more accessible and successful.

We talked with Liesel Hess, a QA engineer at Punchkick with a background in biomedical research, and Dr. John D. Polk, PhD. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Human Biomechanics Lab, about the impact that ResearchKit might have on the future of medical science.

ResearchKit has the potential to change the future of medical science.

ResearchKit provides developers with new tools to record and report medical data sourced from iOS devices. In addition to user flows that enroll them in medical research programs, ResearchKit provides APIs that benefit from Apple’s most advanced hardware technologies. Users can report their dietary and lifestyle habits to learn about their risk for heart disease. Leveraging its sensitive microphone, users can exhale forcefully into their iPhones and provide data about asthmatic conditions. And using the iPhone’s gyroscope and accelerometer, ResearchKit apps can report on users’ gait as they walk and even report signs of Parkinson’s Disease.

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These capabilities fundamentally change the conversation around medical studies. “Medical research usually centers around two types of studies,” said Hess, “Longitudinal and latitudinal. Longitudinal studies focus on a handful of subjects over a long period of time—sometimes for years or even decades. By contrast, latitudinal studies sample a larger number of subjects, and may only gather data once.”

Longitudinal studies benefit from long-term observation of subjects over time, whereas latitudinal studies provide researchers with a wide sampling of relevant data. According to Liesel Hess, ResearchKit presents an opportunity for medical researchers to get the benefits of both.

“Crowd-sourcing medical data from devices like smartphones or smartwatches gives researchers detailed, continuous, round-the-clock information from large numbers of people over long periods of time.” —Liesel Hess, Punchkick QA Engineer

“ResearchKit grants access to both long-term data and very large numbers of people at the same time,” said Hess. “This would effectively combine the techniques and focuses of both longitudinal and latitudinal studies. As a researcher, this would be a dream come true for me.”

Of course, gathering data from public volunteers using iOS will present new challenges. Dr. Polk highlighted users’ likelihood to improperly record or inaccurately report data. “Researchers can’t always screen for exclusionary criteria [with ResearchKit] as is commonly done with study enrollment questionnaires.”

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Hess also noted the new distance that ResearchKit introduces between researchers and their subjects. “When I was a medical researcher, I was required to obtain special certifications to run tests on human volunteers,” Hess said. “This training helps professional scientists ensure accuracy throughout the data-gathering process and adjust medical equipment to accommodate different test subjects. It’s also difficult to falsify data with someone in a lab coat standing over your shoulder.”

“As a researcher, [ResearchKit] would be a dream come true for me.” —Liesel Hess, Punchkick QA Engineer

Because the general population doesn’t necessarily have scientific training, and because the medical research conducted through ResearchKit won’t benefit from professional supervision, the quantity of available data might increase—but the quality of the data might suffer from the disconnection between volunteers and researchers. “In order to ensure data quality,” said Dr. Polk, “it’s best to know your subjects.”

Despite its possible drawbacks, Polk and Hess agreed about the value of ResearchKit as precursor to new waves of innovation within the medical research space. “ResearchKit will certainly open up some interesting new avenues for data collection,” Polk said. Hess’s outlook is even more optimistic: “People have always said that smartphones are the best way to improve medical delivery to the developing world. With new tools like ResearchKit, mobile technologies are making good on that promise.”

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