What Happened
Apple first unveiled CareKit, an open-source SDK for building apps that monitor and collect data from patients with chronic diseases or in post-surgery recovery, at its keynote event last month. Apple officially started rolling out CareKit on Thursday, and the first batch of apps integrated with CareKit are now here. They include two apps from Glow for new parents, Glow Nurture and Glow Baby, a diabetes-tracking app called One Drop, and an app for monitoring depression medications named Start.
What Healthcare Brands Need To Do
Following the well-received HealthKit, Apple’s CareKit should provide healthcare and pharmaceutical brands with another great channel to learn more about patients’ needs. Data collected from mobile and wearable devices is playing an increasingly crucial role in medical research and improving patient-care practices. Fitbit announced yesterday that it is teaming up with a leading research center in Boston to assist the data collection in a major cancer research project. For healthcare brands, the official rollout of CareKit means it is time to start working with developers to figure out how to integrate their products or services into those patient-facing CareKit apps and gain insights from the data they generate.
Source: TechCrunch
