On Apple's Recent Health Specialist Hires and ResearchKit
Apple has hired an important individual that is largely credited for the early adoption of ResearchKit and HealthKit at the Duke University. If you remember the very first Apple event, we saw a list of partners that are working to make the idea behind ResearchKit a reality and the Duke University was among the top partners.
The work and projects that Duke University made were spear headed by Dr. Ricky Bloomfield. Apple decided to hire him, perhaps in an effort to make ResearchKit even better and directly lead future capabilities of the project.
Dr. Bloomfield was responsible for the first patient-created data set with ResearchKit where patient’s weight and blood pressure were collected and used for research. Then, he went a step further and led the Autism & Beyond project to detect early signs of autism from video analysis.
Earlier this year, Apple also hired a bunch of other doctors and researchers that were using ResearchKit early on. No doubt to look into future applications in very diverse field. Who better than specialists like those to see the future of ResearchKit? I have already participated in research studies over long periods of time and seeing the extensive work needed to make classic research without ResearchKit. With or without ResearchKit, you would still need financial resources, possibly SR&ED financing to help with your research. I’m a strong believer into what ResearchKit can do to diminish the work required by research subjects and researcher to gather more data, more reliably and with much less irritation. If it takes less work, then it can also cost less or give you an amazing opportunity to users many many more subjects and maybe result in more accurate results.
The coming decade will no doubt look very different from the ones before and I can see so many applications using iPhones, watch and ResearchKit. Exciting times!
