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back to article Studying humans for science? Wrap your eyeballs around our fine print, says Apple

Apple has updated its App Store developer guidelines to include new restrictions on apps that gather health data for purposes of medical research. The revised guidelines include a new paragraph aimed specifically at developers who want to take advantage of ResearchKit, Cupertino's new framework for health research. "Apps …

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  1. Mr.Mischief

    Evolution of WebMD

    So now you'd have millions of hypochondriacs signing up for things thinking they have them..?

    Will that skew the data? Will it need to be filtered somehow?

    1 2 Reply
  2. ratfox

    I thought the data would simply be anonymized before it ever reaches the researchers?

    Maybe that's not enough, and there is a risk to identify the Guinea pigs…

    1 1 Reply
  3. Diogenes

    Lots and lots of noise

    Back in the good old days I worked for a company that was having a major "health push". and they were passing out pedometers and having inter team competitions with "real" prizes for those that "walked" the furtherest. My team won. We strapped pedometers to our feet & tapped, several enterprising team members strapped them to pendulum clocks at home or metronomes, another guy rigged up a meccano device that looked a bit like a steam locomotive wheel with the mainrod & cylinder piston (used in certain movies for other purposes) & attached it.

    When the local HR Exec who was responsible for this nonsense came through and saw what we were doing the whole thing died a quick death.

    6 0 Reply
  4. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Withn the US...

    Within the US, human research protocols for studies already require this type of informed consent. I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't required in Europe as well (due to privacy laws, I'm sure at least you'd have to be told the info is collected.)

    There are a few exemptions -- primarily for psych experiments, where giving away the true nature of the experiment ahead of time could invalidate the results. (For example, the Milgram experiment -- which researched how much a person would harm another if someone in authority tells them to do so -- wouldn't have provided valid results if you were told ahead of time "Each time you are told the person on the other side got an answer wrong, you will turn up this knob a bit and push this button, and we'll play a recording of someone pretending to get increasingly severe shocks.")

    2 0 Reply
  5. Slx

    Does this mean that fart apps could now take on a whole new purpose?

    0 0 Reply
    1. Richard Taylor 2
      Reply Icon
      Headmaster

      I don't think the watch has appropriate sensors. although I suppose a seismic sensor might work

      0 0 Reply
  6. Chris G

    Control

    Apple appears to be taking health monitoring seriously, suggesting that they see revenue as a result.

    As I mentioned in a comment on Dabbsy's article; they could be thinking of real time monitoring and analyisis on the iCloud so maximum control would be in their interests.

    0 0 Reply

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