Stanford Researchers Launch Heart Health iPhone App
Researchers at the Stanford University
School of Medicine have released a free iPhone app, MyHeart Counts, which
is designed to help people learn about the health of their own hearts while
contributing to a study of human heart health.
People can use the MyHeart Counts app to complete tasks and respond to
surveys. In return, the app will provide them with an assessment of their heart
health and information about how to improve it. Researchers will collect and
analyze the data about physical activity and cardiac risk factors to further the
study of prevention and treatment of heart disease.
The app uses the iPhone's built-in motion sensors to track participants'
physical activity during a 6-minute walk test. Participants who have a wearable
activity device connected to the MyHeart Counts app can use the device to
collect additional data.
"MyHeart Counts aims to be the largest study of measured physical activity
and cardiovascular health to date," said Michael McConnell, professor of
cardiovascular medicine at Stanford, in a prepared statement. "We want people to
join in this research effort to give them personalized information about their
heart health and help provide fundamental new insights into how activity helps
your heart, across all ages, genders, cultures and countries."
The study is open to adults aged 18 or over. The current version of the app
is available in English only to residents of the United States and requires an
iPhone 5s, 6 or 6 Plus. The team behind the app plans to make it available for
other mobile platforms in the future and expand the app's availability
worldwide.
The app uses Apple's new ResearchKit framework, which is designed to help researchers and developers
to create apps for use in medical studies. Apple plans to release the framework
as open source software next month.
Further information about MyHeart Counts can be found on Stanford's site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].