Healthcare provider-related digital health reports from Q1 2016

Apple once again made few major announcements this quarter that should be on healthcare providers' and medical researchers' radars. At a special event in the month of March, Apple announced the launch of its new CareKit platform, as well as some new features of Apple ResearchKit.

CareKit is an open source toolkit for hospitals and health systems. It will begin with two applications: one for home monitoring of Parkinson's and one for post-surgical discharge. The University of Rochester Medical Center, UCSF, Parkinson's Disease Care New York, Stanford Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Emory Healthcare will all begin utilizing the CareKit Parkinson's app, while Texas Medical Center will pilot another app, a replacement for paper surgical discharge forms.

Apple also declared that ResearchKit would be updated to more easily make utilization of users' genetic data, through a module designed by consumer genetics company 23andMe. Apple added other modules for common medical tests to ResearchKit.

Apple announced 3 ResearchKit apps that will start incorporating genetic data, one new app and 2 existing ones. PPD Act, led by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, will use genetic data to explore the question of why postpartum depression affects some women and not others. Stanford's MyHeartCounts app will incorporate data from 23andMe users who are already using the app, to help them to study genetic predisposition toward heart conditions and how they interrelate to lifestyle and activity factors. Mount Sinai's Asthma Health app, co-developed by LifeMap Solutions, will "use genetic data from 23andMe customers to help researchers better understand ways to personalize asthma treatment," according to Apple.