Apple Starts HealthKit Trials With Stanford, Duke, Medical Device Partners
By Jof Enriquez,
Follow me on Twitter @jofenriq
Apple Inc. is reportedly about to commence two clinical trials using its new HealthKit health platform with patients from two prestigious hospitals in the United States.
Apple is working with Stanford University Hospital on using HealthKit in a trial involving kids with Type 1 diabetes. The company is also working separately with Duke University on a pilot study using HealthKit with cancer and heart disease patients, according to Reuters. The data gathered from multiple devices and various health apps used by the patients will be collected by HealthKit — making it easier and quicker for clinicians to review health data in one place. Hospital doctors can use the “MyChart” app from Epic Systems — another Apple partner — to get patient data during the trials that will start in a few weeks.
Stanford Children's chief medical information officer Christopher Longhurst said in the report that two of their pediatric patients will be given the iPod Touch device to check their sugar levels at home between visits.
Duke University's Ricky Bloomfield, an internal medicine pediatrician and director of mobile strategy, told Reuters that the trial to track data such as weight and blood pressure at home will provide doctors with more accurate information.
“This could eliminate the hassle of getting data from patients, who want to give it to us,” Bloomfield said in the Reuters article. “HealthKit removes some of the error from patients' manually entering their data.”
Reuters said that DexCom Inc., a manufacturer of blood glucose monitoring devices, is involved in both the Stanford and Duke trials. It also said that DexCom CTO Jorge Valdes has been talking to Apple and the U.S. FDA about integrating DevCom’s devices with HealthKit.
Per Apple Insider, “The DexCom device relies on a sensor inserted under the skin of a patient's abdomen, which transmits data every five minutes to handheld receiver. That receiver measures blood glucose levels, and sends the information to a mobile application that can be installed on an iPhone or iPad, tapping into the HealthKit tools found in Apple's iOS 8 mobile operating system.”
Apple may also award "HealthKit Certification" for third party developers that comply with the company’s newly minted guidelines on privacy of data and ban on selling health information to advertisers, Reuters reported.
HealthKit was unveiled by Apple during its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Apple envisions the platform to be a conduit for health data between medical devices and health apps used at home by patients, and electronic health records and information systems used in hospitals and clinics.
“Going forward, medical device companies will predominantly depend on third party apps running on iOS,” Seeking Alpha said in an analysis. “The release of HealthKit will place Apple miles ahead of competitors like Google or Microsoft in the mobile healthcare market.”