Apple's CareKit is now available to the open source community Github, a move the company believes will spur app development and new tools to the healthcare framework, it announced last week.
CareKit, as FierceMobileHealthcare previously reported, is aimed at helping hospitals, health systems and developers to build apps to better manage patients' health.
The CareKit team has been working with several startups on apps, from diabetes management to a medication intake for depression patients, according to a Fast Company article. The Cleveland Clinic also is expected to launch a respiratory related app in the very near future, the report states.
During the CareKit debut in March, Apple stated the platform will be used by John Hopkins Medicine, Emory Healthcare, University of Rochester Medical Center, Stanford Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco to help patients with Parkinson's monitor and track symptoms.
CareKit is also playing a role in other app efforts, according to Time, including for the mental health app Start and a pregnancy app. Such tools could help patients avoid unneeded hospitalization, reports Time.
"If you have chronic medical conditions, [like] heart rhythm failure, this is an important matter because the management of that condition could be critical to avoiding hospitalizations," Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, tells Time. "It reflects a whole democratization of medicine. This would be seen as alien, foreign a few years ago."
For more information:
- read the Apple blog
- read the Fast Company article
- read the Time article