This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Larry Greenmeyer.

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The Apple Watch grabbed most of the headlines when it launched on March 9th.

But for the scientific community, the company's new research kit product is probably

the more interesting development.

Research kit lets scientists more easily write apps for Apple's operating systems, including apps that would

let large numbers of iPhone owners contribute to crowd-sourced medical research.

Researchers at New York City's Mount Sinai's ICON School of Medicine and Wheel

Cornell Medical College have already used research kit in collaboration with

a company called Lifemap Solutions to create the asthma health app to

gather data from asthma sufferers.

According to Apple, research kit has also already been used to write apps for collecting

info on breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.

These apps can take advantage of the iPhone's many built-in sensors for collecting data, including

the accelerometer, microphone, gyroscope, and GPS.

Asma Health supposedly uses GPS data,

combined with info about local air quality,

to point out locations that asthma sufferers should avoid.

And what's called the Empower app for Parkinson's uses the gyroscope to measure dexterity

and gate stability.

Apple did not say whether its new watch could be integrated with Research kit, but the device was touted as being

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