IBM announced on Monday that it will be expanding its partnership with Apple in an effort to help transform medical research. Utilizing its Watson artificial intelligence tech, it's created a new Health Cloud platform that can support health data gathered by iOS apps using Apple's ResearchKit and HealthKit frameworks.
Apple first introduced HealthKit in the summer of last year, as a platform for developers to create apps that integrate with iOS 8's new Health application. This year, it decided to build on that premise with ResearchKit, which allows medical researchers to collect app data from users with diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
IBM will push things even further with Health Cloud, which will de-identify and store health data in a secure, scalable cloud system that enables researchers to access and share data in an open ecosystem environment. Apps that use HealthKit and ResearchKit will be able to easily store, aggregate and model data, enriching research.