From Apple’s ResearchKit page:
ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that enables your iOS app to become a powerful tool for medical research. Easily create visual consent flows, real-time dynamic active tasks, and surveys using a variety of customizable modules that you can build upon and share with the community. And since ResearchKit works seamlessly with HealthKit, researchers can access even more relevant data for their studies — like daily step counts, calorie use, and heart rate.
And here’s the ResearchKit video, if you have not yet seen it.
There are three reasons why they can pull off what is quite literally an exponential improvement for patient participation in medical research:
Integrated stack and ecosystem – rolling this out to a fragmented Android would have been a nightmare and got no traction; Apple Pay is another example of this.
People at the center of design – companies like Google, Oracle, and Microsoft typically put their products and technologies at the center of their design; Apple puts people at the center of what they do so the solutions are simple and obvious to adopt.
Trust – people trust Apple with the stewardship their data.
Oh, and I guess there is a fourth.