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\n“The response to ResearchKit has been fantastic. Virtually overnight, many of the ResearchKit studies have become the largest in history, and researchers are getting information and making discoveries that were not previously possible,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. “Researchers around the world continue to use the iPhone to transform our knowledge of complex diseases, and thanks to the ongoing support of the open source community, the possibilities for the iPhone in medical research are limitless.”
\nResearchKit transforms the iPhone into a powerful medical research tool by helping doctors, scientists and other researchers collect data more frequently and accurately from participants located around the world, via iPhone apps. Participants enrolled in these app-based studies have access to an interactive consent process, can easily complete tasks or questionnaires, and control how their medical data is shared with researchers, making it easier than ever to contribute to medical research.
\nBy offering ResearchKit as open source code, any developer can quickly design a study for iPhone. They can also exploit existing code and share their tasks with the community, so that other researchers can do more with the software environment. Thanks to a new module made available to the open source community, researchers are now able to integrate genetic data into their studies in a simple, seamless and cost-effective manner. Designed by 23andMe, the module allows study participants to easily share their genetic data with medical research. The researchers are also collaborating with the National Institutes of Mental Health to provide saliva testing kits to participants based on their responses to various questionnaires.
\n“There is still so much to learn about postpartum depression, and DNA is a potential key to better understanding why some women have symptoms and others don’t,” said Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, MPH, Director of the Perinatal Psychiatry Program, UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. “With ResearchKit, and now the ability to integrate genetic data, we are able to interact with a more geographically and demographically diverse sample of women with postpartum depression, and analyze the genomic signature of postpartum depression to help us find more effective treatments.”
\n“Collecting these types of information will allow researchers to identify genomic indicators for different diseases and conditions,” said Eric Schadt, PhD, Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Founding Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology. “Take asthma for example. ResearchKit allows us to study this population on a larger scale than ever before, and with the large amounts of data we are able to collect via the iPhone, we better understand how factors such as environment, location and genes influence disease and response to treatment.”
\nResearchKit studies that integrate genetic data:
\n– Postnatal depression: PPD Act is a new app-based study that will use genetic testing to better understand why some women experience postnatal depression, by examining the genetic make-up of affected patients. Conducted by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the International Postpartum Depression: Action Towards Causes and Treatment Consortium, PPD Act will provide participating individuals with access to saliva testing kits provided by the National Institutes of Mental Health.
\n– Cardiovascular Disease: Designed by Stanford Medicine, the MyHeart Counts app will analyze genetic data from 23andMe customers to better identify predispositions to heart disease and measure the impact of participants’ activity and behavior on their cardiovascular health. By studying these links on a large scale, researchers hope to better understand how to keep a healthy heart.
\n– Asthma: The Asthma Health app, designed to analyze symptom sets in individuals and identify potential triggers, will use genetic data from 23andMe customers to help researchers better tailor asthma treatments. Asthma Health is designed by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and LifeMap Solutions.
\nResearchers continue to adapt ResearchKit and enhance the software environment with new modules to integrate tests typically performed in the examination room into iPhone apps. Key contributions include the ability to study tonal audiometry; measure reaction time between a known stimulus and a known reaction; assess information processing speed and working memory; use the Tour de Hanoi mathematical puzzle in studies of cognition; and conduct timed walking tests.
\nResearchKit studies continue to expand internationally and are available in the following countries: Australia, Austria, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States. ResearchKit apps are available in the App Store for iPhone 5 and later and for the latest generation iPod touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"