Published 11th November 2016
We’re living in a unique time for the providers of medicines, technology and healthcare solutions. With budding technology specifically targeting healthcare sectors like ResearchKit, an open source framework introduced by Apple that allows researchers and developers to create powerful apps for medical research, we’re seeing a shift in dialogue between patient and healthcare providers. And because we love staying on top of the latest technologies, we just couldn’t help but get involved.
Check out our top ten picks for the latest healthcare apps worth the hype, powered by ResearchKit.
Developed by: Analog Republic, partner Thread, John Hopkins Medicine
EpiWatch is the first ever Apple Watch app to utilize Apple ResearchKit providing health information such as heart rate, gyroscope and accelerometer data. It includes a daily journal to track seizures, treatments and medication side effects, as well as providing SMS notifications for caregivers when participants start tracking a seizure.
Developed by: Analog Republic, partner Thread, University of California San Francisco
The PRIDE Study app gives the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community a simple way to participate in the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF) PRIDE Study of the LGBTQ population. The PRIDE Study is the first population-level longitudinal study of LGBTQ health, allowing researchers to gain insight into priority health issues as well as unique health disparities in this diverse population. The free app enables real-time consent, enrolment, and participation in the study from your iPhone. The UCSF PRIDE Study app will allow LGBTQ participants to voice their health concerns so researchers can crowdsource health topics that are important within the LGBTQ community in order to design the longitudinal questionnaires.
Developed by: Sage Bionetworks and the University of Rochester
mPower uses sensors within your iPhone to measure and track patients’ Parkinson’s symptoms including tremor, balance and gait, certain vocal characteristics and memory. Using a combination of surveys and tasks, the app collects data both before and after taking medication, in order to gain insight to the variability of Parkinson’s, better track progression of the disease and ultimately help to improve the quality of life of those living with Parkinson’s.
Developed by: Dan-Farber Cancer Institute, Penn Medicine, Sage Bionetworks and UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
Share the Journey utilises questionnaires and collecting phone sensor data to track five common symptoms of breast cancer treatment that can persist even after active treatment ends – fatigue, mood and cognitive changes, sleep disturbances, and changes in exercise. The app allows patients to track these symptoms and others of their choosing, review trends, and provide insights to researchers and the breast cancer community about how symptoms might change day to day.
Developed by: Massachusetts General Hospital
GlucoSuccess helps you keep track of health behaviours is of paramount important for people with type 2 diabetes. Data patients share regarding their physical activity, diet and taking their medicines as part of the research study will create an unprecedented crowd-sourced database of health behaviours and glucose values. Studying all this real-world data will help researchers understand how health behaviours influence blood glucose in real life, with a resolution greater than ever before. By combining a personal app and a research study, GlucoSuccess will help explore how the iPhone can enable new kinds of clinical research.
Developed by: Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine and LifeMap Solutions
Asthma Health is a personalized tool that helps patients gain greater insight into their asthma, adhere to treatment plans, avoid triggers, and take charge of their health. The app provides personalized reminders to take prescribed medications, helps track patient’s condition 24/7, allows them to review trends, and gives them feedback on their progress, aiming to help patients experience less asthma-related distress with better symptoms control, improved quality of life, and fewer unexpected medical visits.
Developed by: Stanford Medicine
MyHeart Counts is a personalised tool that can help patient’s measure their daily activity, fitness, and cardiovascular risk. MyHeart Counts can also help patients better understand their own heart health and contribute to our understanding of how to keep hearts healthy around the world. The app can help patients measure their activity through the sensors in their iPhone or the Apple Watch, or any wearable activity device linked to Apple Health App.
Developed by: Duke University Health System
Autism & Beyond hosts a ground-breaking new study of childhood mental health. The study aims to test new video technology that can analyse a child’s emotion and behaviour. The hope is that this technology may one day be used to screen young children in their homes for autism and mental health challenges, such as anxiety or tantrums, allowing parents to have tools that will help them understand their children and find help if they need it.
Developed by: Sage Bionetworks, Oregon Health & Science University
Mole Mapper is a personalized tool to help patients map, measure, and monitor the moles on their skin. Using a phone camera, Mole Mapper tracks moles and how they change and grow over time relative to a reference object, like a coin, as rapid change or growth may indicate malignancy. By regularly checking and sharing mole images over time, researchers can develop new ways of evaluating moles and may (at some point in the future) be able to tell whether patients need to see a doctor or have a mole removed. App users can also maintain these images exclusively on their phone app to share with their medical team, or, after a consent process on the app, can transmit the data from images and periodic surveys to researchers for analysis.
At Analog Republic we're currently working on a number of new apps providing valuable research data we never thought possible. We're excited to be involved in not just the technological advances, but the opportunity to put our skills to task on something that can actually help people and change lives.
Healthcare apps offer patients a way to track and share information regarding their health through a medium that is intuitive to their lifestyle, and being able to better track patient behaviour and symptoms at an instinctive level could be the key to better patient efficacy and improved quality of life. Furthermore, these apps offer unprecedented volume of crowd-sourced data to medical professionals and researchers that have otherwise not been accessible due to factors such as location and demographic of study participants. These new insights could be revolutionary for early detection of diseases and medical conditions, new treatment developement and potential cures.
To read an exclusive article with Fast Company about EpiWatch and the potential doors it could open for people like Shaina, Click here.
If you’d like to find out more about the future of healthcare apps, or to just have a chat about an upcoming project, get in touch with Del at delc@analogrepublic.com.