We at Macgasm think ResearchKit is kind of a big deal—after all, it could lower the barrier of entry for medical research and increase participation. And as a recent story by Fusion’s Daniela Hernandez shows, it’s something the medical community’s been working toward for a while:
“‘Imagine ten trials, several thousand patients,’ said Friend, the founder of Seattle-based Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit that champions open science and data sharing. ‘Here you have genetic information, and you have what drugs they took, how they did. Put that up in the cloud, and you have a place where people can go and query it, [where] they can make discoveries.’ In this scenario, Friend said, patients would be able to control who could access their information, and for which purposes. But their health data would be effectively open-sourced.
“The crowd was receptive. Several people looking to share their data with scientists stood up to ask what options they had. There were a few open-source health data projects in the works, Friend replied, but nothing fully-formed. ‘We’re pretty close,’ he reassured them.”
“He was closer than he thought. Sitting in the audience that day was Mike O’Reilly, a newly minted vice president for medical technologies at Apple.”
It’s a must-read for anyone interested in ResearchKit.
