The Newest Life-Saving Software By Apple

On Thursday, Apple released CareKit, its newest software platform which is designed to help developers improve personal health management apps. The company said that CareKit has already been integrated into 4 health apps developed by other companies.

As cited in a news article on NBC News, the company aims to help developers create easy-to-use apps for patients to easily record symptoms, acquire useful information, and track their progress as well as send reports to a physician. Medical professionals believe that Apple's CareKit program could actually help bring standards to a relatively new and rowdy industry, while giving the company a foothold in the continually growing health-tech market.

This week, CareKit apps hitting the Apple online store include Start for people taking anti-depression drugs, One Drop for diabetics, and 2 great apps from health startup Glow, which aimed at women who are pregnant or caring for newborns. According to a news report on ABC News, Apple says that larger organizations, which include the University of Rochester and hospitals at the Texas Medical Center, are currently working on Apple's CareKit apps for individuals with Parkinson's disease and patients who have gone through heart or lung operations.

"These mobile tools can help people reach their health goals," Thomas Goetz of Iodine said in a statement. Iodine is a startup which used CareKit in the latest version of its Start app. Start has used a CareKit feature which allows patients to send reports to their physicians. Goetz believed that medical professionals, in the long run, will be able to act in response by adjusting their instructions for medication, diet or exercise.

Because data stored on iPhones are certainly encrypted, Iodine's app definitely provides cautions for patients understand that they are sending sensitive information to their doctors. Goetz, moreover, claimed that his company is likewise building back-end software for medical offices which will meet the terms of federal confidentiality rules.

Nevertheless, he truly acknowledged the fact that both physicians and insurers are still in the process of making sense of the world of health care apps. "They're trying to understand which ones are valid tools and which aren't necessarily useful," he said.