First medical apps built with Apple’s ResearchKit won’t share data for commercial gain

As concern grows about data collection by mobile apps, Apple and companies involved with its new ResearchKit software development framework for medical studies say users of the first five apps have nothing to worry about.

Access to health data collected by the apps will be restricted to approved medical researchers and barred from commercial use, and the apps won’t delve into the personal contents stored on a smartphone, according to the companies.

Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit biomedical research organization in Seattle, handles collecting, de-identifying and storing of the health data gathered from the five apps developed with ResearchKit, Christine Suver, principal scientist, head of open science data governance at Sage, said in an email interview.

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