Stanford University and Duke University Hospitals are working with Apple to test out the consumer tech company's HealthKit service for pilot projects, a report from Reuters indicates.
HealthKit is Apple's service, announced in June at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC), which can gather and integrate health data from a number of apps and put it all into one interface. The data can include vitals, such as blood pressure and weight. This interface allows these different apps to communicate with each other, the company says. The phone will be included in an iPhone 6 in September.
The service has been previously linked to projects at other several big-name provider organizations, including the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. The collaborations with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University and Duke University Hospital will respectively focus on tracking blood sugar levels for kids with diabetes and blood pressure, weight and other measurements for patients with cancer or heart disease.
According to Reuters, Christopher Longhurst, M.D., CMIO at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University, said that Stanford and Duke were the furthest provider organizations along in developing pilot projects with Apple to use HealthKit. He said to Reuters that patients with Type 1 diabetes will be sent home with an iPod touch to monitor blood sugar levels between visits. Details of the Duke program were not shared but it will rely on patient data being gathered at the home as well.
The report touches on Apple's efforts to ensure privacy of data. The company is considering creating a certification for third-party developers, which stipulates how the data must be stored and forbidding the sale of data to advertisers.
