Boston Children's Hospital launches public fever study based on Apple's ResearchKit

Boston Children's Hospital on Tuesday announced the launch of a new iPhone app and study project, Feverprints, based on Apple's open-source ResearchKit platform.

Unlike some ResearchKit studies, Feverprints is intended for the general public in order to crowdsource data. The iPhone app ask users to regularly record their temperatures, and answer questions about symptoms, medications, and other health-related topics. To improve privacy, data is being anonymized, and while both adults and children can enroll, children must have parental consent.

The ultimate goal is to narrow down the span of normal and febrile body temperatures, and deduce "feverprints" that may help diagnose infections and other diseases. The study is also concerned with finding out how well fever-reduction medications actually work.

Apple originally launched ResearchKit in March 2015, and since then the platform has found its way into a number of iOS and Apple Watch apps. Most recently Harvard University began using an app to track long-term damage to former NFL players.

Last week Apple debuted another medical platform, CareKit, geared toward patients exiting clinics and hospitals. That technology is slated to become available next month.

12 Comments

ericthehalfbee 4489 comments · 13 Years

About 8 years ago

This will go down as one of the most significant things Apple has ever developed. The potential impact to people's health is enormous.

cnocbui 3612 comments · 17 Years

ericthehalfbee said:

This will go down as one of the most significant things Apple has ever developed. The potential impact to people's health is enormous.

The potential impact on people's health will be no different than any other epidemiological data gathering method. It will actually be very close to having people fill in paper-based forms.

Given that people like to make a big thing about the differing socio-economic profiles of iOS and Android users, a study based on just an iOS app would have a considerable built-in bias, which given the protocols medical research is usually supposed to be conducted by, is probably not a good thing.

It would probably be better if the survey data collection method were web based to reduce such a bias.

sog35 said:

And yet we hear nothing about this in the media.

This is LIFE SAVING stuff. Yet all the media talks about is how the AppleWatch is a total failure.
Pathetic.

Right now the media is hyping of all things the Amazon Echo. LOLOOOLLLOLOLOL!!

Its pretty obvious to me that Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are paying $$$ to the media to write puff pieces about them and bash Apple as much as possible.

This not life saving stuff and it has nothing to do with the Watch. An Watch did get help for a possibly save the life of a teen who's car fell on him - that got media attention. You are paranoid.

JinTech 1056 comments · 9 Years

cnocbui said:

ericthehalfbee said:

This will go down as one of the most significant things Apple has ever developed. The potential impact to people's health is enormous.

The potential impact on people's health will be no different than any other epidemiological data gathering method. It will actually be very close to having people fill in paper-based forms.

I beg to differ. For someone who has filled out countless pages of medical forms, I would much rather press a few options on a screen.

2old4fun 239 comments · 11 Years

Concubine said, The potential impact on people's health will be no different than any other epidemiological data gathering method. It will actually be very close to having people fill in paper-based forms. Given that people like to make a big thing about the differing socio-economic profiles of iOS and Android users, a study based on just an iOS app would have a considerable built-in bias, which given the protocols medical research is usually supposed to be conducted by, is probably not a good thing. It would probably be better if the survey data collection method were web based to reduce such a bias. It is sad that you have such a negative attitude. It would probably help if you had a good understanding of the subject. There is good reason not to use the web. But the effort to research and learn might be more than you want to do.