23andMe customers will be able to share their genetic information with medical researchers through Apple's ResearchKit, Technology Review reports. Researchers will be able to combine that genetic data with other health information collected by users' iPhones.
"This will enable research on a much broader scale," says Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, in a press release. "Incorporating genetics into a platform with the reach of ResearchKit will accelerate insights into illness and disease even further."
As the Verge notes, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai's Asthma Health and Stanford's MyHeart Counts will be the first ResearchKit apps to incorporate the 23andMe module. The Asthma Health app tracks asthma symptoms in some 8,000 participants and studies possible triggers for those symptoms, while the MyHeart Counts follows the activity level of 50,000 participants to study ways to prevent heart disease.
To add their genetic data to the studies, users have to go through a consent process, Tech Review says, adding that all the genetic data will stay on 23andMe's servers, not individuals' phones.