Apple ResearchKit is the company’s most important announcement in years

IT’S not a new watch, phone or computer. But Apple’s ResearchKit could actually change the world forever. Here’s what you need to know about it.

IT MIGHT not be as flash or exciting on the surface as the Apple Watch or the new MacBook, but Apple’s new ResearchKit is something very important. This has the potential to change how medical research is done forever.

ResearchKit is a software platform that will help turn the iPhone into a medical diagnostic tool. Apple says it has sold over 700 million of them, so that’s a lot of people who can both be diagnosed and contribute to medical research.

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“There are hundreds of millions of iPhone owners out there who would gladly contribute,” said Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations at Apple, during Apple’s “Spring Forward” event.

Apple says it has worked with researchers from Mount Sinai, Stanford Medical, The University of Oxford, Penn Medicine and other world class institutions. These researchers have already used ResearchKit to build apps for studies on asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

mPower is one of five ResearchKit apps available today for developers.

One of those early apps developed with the framework is called mPower. This app uses tapping, where you jab at the button popping up on the screen several times to detect hand tremors, a sign of Parkinson’s disease.

Gait and balance tests can even be performed just by going for a walk with your iPhone in your pocket.

Its game changing use though comes in the form of collecting data. Traditionally researchers have struggled to get participants into studies, but with ResearchKit that’s all about to change.

“Numbers are everything,” Dr. Eduardo Sanchez of the American Heart Association says on Apple.com. “The more people who contribute their data, the bigger the numbers, the truer the representation of a population, and the more powerful the results. A research platform that allows large amounts of data to be collected and shared — that can only be a positive thing for medical research.”

ResearchKit will be available to the public next month.

Researchers are the only ones seeing your data.