Apple announced a new Apple Research app during Tuesday’s “By Innovation Only” event that will pair with the Apple Watch and the iPhone to crowdsource health data for future research.
The company hopes that anyone with an Apple Watch will be able to share their data with scientists, enabling them to improve their research. The first three studies conducted on the Apple Research app will be a hearing study, a women’s health study, and a heart and movement study.
The hearing study conducted with the World Health Organization and the University of Michigan will analyze how daily sound exposure will impact your long-term hearing health.
The women’s health study will look at menstrual cycles and mensuration tracking to see how it can screen infertility and osteoporosis in women, and is in partnership with Harvard School of Public Health and the National Institute of Health.
Finally, the heart and movement study conducted with the American Heart Association and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston will take attempt to better detect early warning signs for heart disease and help create future innovations for overall health.
“We are excited to be working with all the study participants and with Apple to identify the features of complex human physiology that lead to different outcomes in wellness or chronic disease, and to use this information to empower individuals to maximize their own health,” said Calum MacRae, the vice chair of Scientific Innovation for the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, in the official press release.
People can choose to participate in these studies beginning later this year by enrolling through the Apple Research app. You can decide which data you want to share on the app.
“It gives all of us an amazing opportunity to participate in health research that could lead to innovations that could improve our health and the health of future generations,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, during the unveiling of the app.
Apple said that over 400,000 people participated in its heart study that monitored irregular heart rates, and that the success of that study prompted the creation of the three new studies announced on Tuesday. The Research app will be available to download later this year.
