3 Takeaways about Apple’s New Mental and Physical Health Study

The world of health care disruption and innovation often seems like a sprint, but it is a marathon.

Apple is a perfect illustration. The tech giant recently announced its new wide-ranging Apple Health Study. The longitudinal research aims to further understand how technology can play a role in improving physical and mental health and overall well-being.

The company stated that the study may take at least five years before its full impact is realized and will build on previous research from the Apple Women’s Study, Apple Hearing Study and the Apple Heart and Movement Study. Even with that lag time, results from the study have the potential to be groundbreaking, the company notes.

Consumers can volunteer for the latest study through the Research app in the company’s iPhone and can opt out at any time. De-identified data from the study will explore relationships within various areas of health, such as mental health’s impact on heart rate or how sleep can influence exercise. The study is being conducted in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a research hospital and teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, Boston.

3 Things to Know about the Study

1 | This is Apple’s most expansive health study yet.

Unlike prior Apple health studies that focused on specific areas, this research will gather data from iPhones, Apple Watches and AirPods to try to discover new relationships within different areas of health, both physical and mental.

Takeaway

Much like its previous health studies, Apple will use the findings from this research to learn and inform its product development and potential features to add in the future. The hearing test offered through Apple’s AirPods is an example of how previous studies impacted product development. Other advances that came out of Apple research studies include the Vitals app on the AppleWatch and the Walking Steadiness app on the iPhone.

Changes in health can affect one or more parts of the body, and others may affect well-being overall, so helping to identify these changes earlier can help offer a more proactive approach to health. For example, early detection of a change in hearing health could reduce the risk for cognitive decline.

2 | Survey tools will add important data to the research.

Study participants not only will contribute data but also will be prompted to answer questions periodically about their at-home life and habits. The study spans many health and disease areas, including activity, aging, cardiovascular health, circulatory health, cognition, hearing, menstrual health, mental health, metabolic health, mobility, neurologic health, respiratory health, sleep and more.

Takeaway

The longitudinal, virtual study data can be used to predict, detect, monitor and manage changes in participants’ health, Apple states. Additionally, researchers will explore connections across different areas of health.

3 | Scale will be an important factor in this study.

It’s impossible to predict how many consumers will participate in the new Apple Health Study, but the company previously has had great success in recruiting participants for its research. More than 400,000 people participated in the first Apple Heart Study. Broadening the scope and scale of this study has the potential to reveal previously unknown connections between lifestyles and different areas of health.

Takeaway

Access to a huge and diverse cohort (Apple device users) could help accelerate discovery and progress. “We anticipate we will likely find some signals that have previously just been missed because we haven’t had studies that are this broad, or we haven’t had studies that are this continuous. We haven’t looked longitudinally or at this level of granularity,” Calum MacRae, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who will serve as principal investigator on the Apple Health Study, noted in a recent interview.