Apple launches Apple Health Study with Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Apple is deepening its investment in health-care research by launching a latest, yearslong project called the Apple Health Study, the corporate announced Wednesday. 

The study will analyze how data from devices reminiscent of iPhones, AirPods and Apple Watches can monitor, manage and predict changes in users’ health. It would also explore connections between different components of health, reminiscent of how mental health affects heart rate.

The Apple Health Study is the primary major health research project the corporate has announced because it unveiled the Apple Women’s Health Study, the Apple Hearing Study and the Apple Heart and Movement Study in 2019. Those projects are ongoing, and so they have inspired lots of the health features that Apple has introduced in recent times.

Apple rolled out a hearing test in the autumn, for example, which was developed using insights from the Apple Hearing Study, the corporate said. 

The brand new study will likely influence future product development. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously said he believes health features will probably be the corporate’s “most vital contribution to mankind.”

“We’re thrilled to bring forward the Apple Health Study, which can only speed up our understanding of health and technology across the human body, each physically and mentally,” Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice chairman of health, said in a press release. 

The Apple Health Study will probably be available through the corporate’s Research app, and participation is voluntary. Users will select each data type they’re willing to share with researchers, and so they can stop sharing or completely discontinue their participation at any time. 

Apple has no access to participants’ identifiable information, the corporate said.  

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a research hospital, is collaborating with Apple on the study. The project will last no less than five years and should expand beyond that.

“We have only just begun to scratch the surface of how technology can improve our understanding of human health,” Dr. Calum MacRae, the principal investigator of the study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a press release.