Apple Watch Can Now Monitor Symptoms Of Parkinson’s Disease

Apple has decided to add a new Application Programming Interface (API) to its ResearchKit framework which will enable Apple Watch to look for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The new API will enable the iOS apps in Apple Watch to make it a powerful tool and measure two very common symptoms of Parkinson’s disease – Tremors and Dyskensia.

Parkinson’s disease is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system which affects the motor system. Apple Watch will measure the shaking and quivering produced due to the tremors and side effects of Dyskensia which causes the fidgeting and swaying motions in patients. The apps will monitor these two conditions throughout the day and then display the recorded data showing the instances of the symptoms each day, hour or minute.

Apple and researchers have been looking for ways to use ResearchKil tools to monitor a wide range of diseases and disorders. The scientists at Cardiogram demonstrated how the watch can be used to measure the signs of a stroke through irregular heartbeats while other researchers have made use of the ResearchKit tool to detect autism, melanoma and epilepsy. Apple will make the API available to the developers with the launch of watch OS 5 while the sample study of the app has already been released on the ResearchKit GitHub page.

Apple has introduced many interesting features at WWDC 2018, including a Walkie-Talkie feature, Podcasts app, the ability to play background audio, and a customizable control centre as well. Apple will be releasing the watchOS 5 for Series 1, 2 and 3 Apple Watches later this year.