Apple’s new CareKit framework officially went live on Thursday, with the debut of four new health-related apps. The platform allows developers to build apps to track, manage, and report on a patient’s medical condition.
“With the right tools, you can play an active role in managing your own health. That’s why we created CareKit — an open source software framework enabling developers to build apps that help you manage your medical conditions. Rather than relying solely on doctor visits, you’ll be able to regularly track your symptoms and medications, and even share the information with your care team for a bigger — and better — picture of your health.”
CareKit was announced at Apple’s March media event, and works similar to Apple’s ResearchKit, but is instead designed to securely collect health data of a single patient, either for their own personal use, or for sharing with healthcare professionals.
The four CareKit apps launching today are aimed at iPhone users:
Glow Nurture: A free pregnancy tracker that allows an expectant mother to log progress and obtain information on what to expect, and when. A subscription is required to unlock full functionality of the app.
Glow Baby: Takes over after a baby has been born, and tracks everything from feed schedules to growth charts, and while it’s a free app, a subscription is also required to unlock full functionality of the app.
One Drop: A diabetes management app that allows logging of glucose, food, meds and activity. It can also sync data from Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose monitors, and can provide reminders when a patients medications are due. The free app offers Apple Watch support.
Start: A free depression-management app. It provides testing and progress-tracking to help determine the effectiveness of meds. The app also provides medication reminders and allows users to log any side-effects they might experience with their meds.
In addition to the new apps, Apple is making the open source CareKit available to developers via GitHub, starting today.
CareKit developers can make use of four interactive modules in their apps:
- The Care Card, which can be configured to manage wellness tasks like medication consumption and exercise.
- The Progress Card, which contains a Symptom and Measurement tracker for logging physical indicators like pain levels, hunger and heart rate, the latter of which might be integrated with Apple Watch.
- The Insight Dashboard module, where Care Card and Progress Card data can be viewed and compared.
- The Connect module, which allows users to share their health data with medical professionals.
AppleInsider reports CareKit is compliant with major healthcare records systems, making it easy for patients to securely share personal health data with a number of supporting hospitals and doctors.
