Apple to Launch Women’s Health, Cardio and Hearing Studies

Apple is deepening their efforts to enable their devices to capture valuable health and medical information, with the latest initiative to encompass a trio of studies in women’s health, heart health and mobility and hearing. The studies will be available via a Research app, scheduled to be launched later this year. The company says it will enable patients and consumers unprecedented access to clinical research and in turn enable new insights into disease processes and outcomes.

The three studies expected to launch this year include a women’s health study that will be conducted in partnership with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Apple has designed what they call the “first long-term study of this scale focused on menstrual cycles and gynecological conditions.” It’s designed to advance screening and risk assessment of conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), infertility, osteoporosis, pregnancy and menopausal transition.

The Research app will also allow participants to access the Apple Heart and Movement Study, which will be a collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the American Heart Association to assess how heart rate and mobility signals, including walking pace and flights of stairs climbed, relate to hospitalizations, falls, heart health and quality of life. The third study, called the Apple Hearing Study, is a collaboration with the University of Michigan to evaluate “how everyday sound exposure can impact hearing.”

These studies represent novel efforts at virtual clinical trials and will help to create more engaged, better-informed patients. We applaud this work to open up clinical research to more participants and the future impact it may have on disease diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.