Apple has officially released CareKit, its medical framework that will be the backdrop of all its health-related services. Along with the software, four new apps utilizing CareKit are now available on the App Store.
CareKit lets developers collect medical data to help people better understand and manage their health, but the software will also provide an easy way to share all this data with physicians and other caregivers to help with diagnosis and treatment. With more and more sensors on the Apple Watch and the iPhone being utilized to monitor our health, Apple hopes CareKit will be utilized to bridge the time between doctor visits.
“Rather than relying solely on doctor visits, you’ll be able to regularly track your symptoms and medications, and even share the information with your care team for a bigger — and better — picture of your health,” the company writes on its CareKit landing page.
The four CareKit apps available to download now are: Glow Nurture, Glow Baby, One Drop, and Start.
Start is a free app that lets you take a depression test, and afterwards, helps track the progress of those who are on a prescription to see if the medication they are taking is helpful. Users can set up pill reminders, and track symptoms and side effects.
One Drop is a one-stop app for tracking “what’s important in diabetes,” including glucose, food, medicine, and activity. This app is free, and you can also access all your related data through the Apple Watch.
Glow Nurture is for expecting mothers and offers a way to log in their progress, access to thousands of articles relating to pregnancy, alerts and insights on the logged data, and reminders of doctor appointments. The app is free, but there’s a monthly subscription fee of $8 for full access to all of its features.
Glow Baby, from the same company, is the app for after your baby is born. It lets you track your baby’s growth with a food, sleep, and diaper change log, provides a breastfeeding timer, and assists you in checking off a CDC-sanctioned list of milestones as your baby reaches them. Like Nurture, this app also is free, but requires a subscription to unlock its full potential.
Of course, all this data is secure, as all data on iPhones are encrypted. Apple also is putting your data in your hands, so “you choose which research studies you want to join, you control what information you provide to which apps, and you can always see the data you’re sharing.”
Fastcompany reports that unlike ResearchKit, CareKit isn’t held back by review board approvals, and this allows anyone to build an app to utilize health data easily. ResearchKit is a similar framework for medical researchers to gather data.
CareKit is now available on Github for developers.
