Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Apple's CareKit Gives More Power to the Patient

Apple's CareKit Gives More Power to the Patient

This article examines the new product being developed by Apple called CareKit. This app is being designed to give consumers a better handle on monitoring their health conditions. The app will also provide better and easier communication between consumers and health care providers. This app was originally created to perform research to help make advancements in the medical industry. However, this app evolved into being more than that. This app will help consumers keep track of medication, monitor activity levels, and track symptoms along with many other useful functions. The data collected from this app will be used to research disease cures and medicine effectiveness. CareKit has the potential to lead to many medical findings and help people take a more prominent role in taking care of their own personal health. Furthermore, this app makes monitoring your own health much easier and quicker. Through this app you can check on your health status and get in touch with medical assistance much easier and faster. The iPhone and Iwatch are two products that CareKit can work through to gather incredible amounts of information on the user that can assist in helping monitor health conditions. The information gathered by this app will only be taken and used for medical research through the consent of the user.
This App will be introduced to consumers within the next few months, and I believe it will have a profound impact in the medical industry. I believe that this app can be extremely helpful to users of all kinds. This app will help people monitor their own health conditions without the need to visit a medical professional. In addition, the app will provide medical help quickly and easily from the palm of your hand whenever necessary. Furthermore I believe that this app will allow for people to take a much healthier approach to their life. Also, the data collected from people using this app could be extremely crucial in leading to new medical advances and developments.  Cures and treatments are just two of many possible benefits that the data collected from this app can bring. Not only can the information help people live a healthier and safer life style through their own control, but also it can lead to medical advancements that could help many more people around the world.
One concern I did find with this app is the security and safeguard of ones own personal health information. This app may lead to the vulnerability of vital medical and personal information of users that may be exploited by others. This app promises to ask the user if they are willing to allow Apple to use their information for research but there still is a concern of possible leaks or hacking of the personal medical information of users. In addition, the accuracy of this app may lead to some issues. The ability for the app to read the medical conditions of the user may or may not be the most accurate.  I find it hard to believe that there will be total consistency from user to user in the ability to monitor health conditions accurately. This inconsistency could lead to false medical suggestions or solutions. However, overall I believe that this app could be very valuable in giving people the power to watch over their own heath. In addition, the prospect of gaining new insights through this app into the medical world is something that is we cannot look past.

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2 comments:

  1. This article presents a possibly very beneficial tool for people to monitor their health and report to health officials often. In today's world, every aspect of life is being converted to some application or program on a smart phone or device. Creating an application that will monitor the health of an individual and report it to health professionals can potentially increase awareness in the user on their lifestyle choices and provide useful information for health care providers. Being a user of an apple watch, I know that there are inconsistencies in the reporting of my activity. For instance, I have found inaccuracies in my step count, exercise, and daily calorie burning. There will need to be a margin of error, in order for this program to be beneficial. Also, this invention relies on the assumption that individuals will have access to their device at all times. Many people may have their device, but not at every hour of the day. This will also cause errors in the data. While there will need to be more test trials done, I think this innovation could prove to be very beneficial.

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  2. The new CareKit app by Apple could likely be effective in, “help[ing] consumers keep track of medication, monitor[ing] activity levels, and track[ing] symptoms…” as well as allowing doctors to better advise their patients. However, my concern with this app is that many health apps already exist on the market currently. While Apple does have a huge following and is successful on many fronts, I’m unsure about how well they’ll be able to penetrate this market. Also, not all tech users are exactly healthy conscious, so Apple may be targeting a small market to beginning with. Additionally, the security and privacy concerns with the app could become over whelming. Consumers may not feel comfortable storing their information with Apple and if a breach were to ever occur, consumer confidence in Apple and their security in general could be severely damaged

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