GSK intends to do a clinical study with iphone Researchkit

The iPhone is about to be used in serious medical research, and Apple's partner is the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Apple launched ResearchKit a year ago, a software infrastructure for medical researchers that is similar to application development templates that allow developers to collect medical data for different research.

GSK has used ResearchKit as a mobile app that will serve as a monitoring tool for clinical research covering 300 patients over a three-month period.

For rheumatoid arthritis, GlaxoSmithKline will use this mobile app to guide patients to articulate, then use sensors to track athletic data and allow patients to input feedback such as pain, fatigue and mood.

So this study does not involve any drug testing, and GSK says their purpose is to "observe the effects of disease in patients' daily lives" to optimize drug development.

This is the first time that ResearchKit has been used in formal research. GSK is also one of the first partners of Apple on this platform. The two sides began cooperation in April last year. Another company that announced the cooperation is Purdue Pharma.

Rob DiCicco, who is responsible for clinical innovation and digitization at GSK, says ResearchKit reduces the cost of clinical research and makes it easier to get more patient data without having to go to a medical center. “Before we needed nurses and doctors to explain the purpose of the study to the patients, and then record their information... One of the things I want to learn now is how to make the app attractive enough to let people interact with it every day. ”

This is consistent with Apple's description of ResearchKit: it can cover as diverse a global population as possible.

For pharmaceutical companies, the development of new drugs requires huge financial support. In order to find the best drug candidate, the R&D project will take a long time to revise the development direction to reduce the risk and ensure the best efficacy of the drug candidate.

There is no doubt that Apple can help in this matter. After all, they have more than 1 billion users, and smartphones can provide multi-dimensional real-time health data, which can promote the progress of research and development to a certain extent.

For Apple, ResearchKit also contributed to the hardware company's plans for health. In recent years, Apple has introduced health-related applications and hardware, such as Apple Watch.

But Apple's role is a bit embarrassing, for example, some people will question Apple's practice involving user privacy. Apple's initial plan was not to serve commercial companies, but to provide ResearchKit to universities and research institutes.

Another obvious problem is that ResearchKit naturally limits the group of people who can afford Apple equipment, which is not good for the diversity pursued by medical research.