Researcher kit lets scientists more easily write apps for Apple’s operating systems, including apps that would let large numbers of iPhone owners contribute to crowd-sourced medical research. 

  Researchers at NYC’s Mount Sinai’s Icahn school of medicine and Weill Cornell medical college have already used research kit in collaboration with a company called ‘Lifemap solutions’ to create the asthma health app to gather data from asthma suffers.

  According to Apple, research kit is also already been used to write apps for colleting info on breast cancer, cardiovascular(心血管的) disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. These apps can take advantage of the iPhone’s many built-in sensors for collecting data, including the accelerometer(加速计), microphone, gyroscope(陀螺仪) and GPS. Asthma health supposedly uses the GPS data, combined with info about local air quality, to point out locations that asthma sufferers should avoid. And what’s called the mPower for Parkinson’s uses the gyroscope to measure dexterity(灵巧) and gait stability. 

  Apple did not say whether its new watch could be integrated with research kit, but the device was touted(被吹捧的) as being able to measure the wearer’s heart rate. So medical researchers will no doubt keep watching the watch.

  Larry Greenemier.