Tim Cook has revealed that over 11,000 people have signed up to the cardiovascular research app 'MyHeart Counts' which runs using Apple's new ResearchKit.
Speaking to Jim Cramer on the US financial program "Mad Money", Cook announced that in just 24 hours, 11,000 people had signed up to the study using iPhone, a study sample that would usually have taken five medical centres and over a year to gather.
Described by Cook as a 'game changer', ResearchKit is an SDK which allows educational institutions and research centres to create apps which will privately and securely gather data about a person's health and their surroundings.
So far ResearchKit has five apps which focus on different areas from asthma to better understanding the early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Bloomberg reports however that some analysts are advising caution over the accuracy of the data being collected by ResearchKit.
Lisa Schwartz, professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice spoke to Bloomberg about the news warning that “just collecting lots of information about people -- who may or may not have a particular disease, and may or may not represent the typical patient -- could just add noise and distraction,”
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One of the key problems that Schwartz and others have with ResearchKit is the demographic it's targeting. Statistically iPhone users have graduate degrees and generally have more financial stability.
Of course one problem that it does solve is that of false reporting. ResearchKit uses the phone's background sensors and health data making it almost impossible for users to falsify the data that's being collected.