NY Times: Bringing iPhone-style Medical Research to the Android World

Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute professor Deborah Estrin is working to bring medical research to Google’s Android platform The New York Times reports.

Since Apple introduced its ResearchKit software in March, scientists at leading medical schools across the country have written apps to study asthma, Parkinson’s disease, autism, epilepsy, melanoma, breast cancer and other ailments. Medical experts are hopeful that using smartphones to gather health data from millions of people, with their consent, can open a window to new insights into diseases, treatments and lifestyle effects.

The Apple move was a breakthrough, but a gap remained. “You can’t just do research studies on people who can afford iPhones,” said Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science at Cornell Tech in New York.

Shortly after Apple introduced ResearchKit, Ms. Estrin, who is also a professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medical College, started trying to bring similar capability to the other major smartphone software platform, Google’s Android. She coordinated the work on a new initiative, ResearchStack, announced on Thursday.