Apple’s Next Big Thing: Your DNA?

There’s nowhere Apple won’t go—including inside the human body—to further technology.

A new report from the MIT Technology Review suggests the tech giant is working with U.S. researchers on apps that would let iPhone users have their DNA tested.

With the help of Cupertino’s new ResearchKit platform, which lets doctors and scientists gather data via smartphone apps, Apple devices could be used to gather genetic information.

Apple won’t be directly collecting or testing genetic code; that will be left up to its academic partners. But data will be preserved in the cloud (presumably iCloud), and MIT reported that certain findings may even appear directly on a consumer’s iPhone screen.

Apple did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment.

Citing an anonymous person “with knowledge of the plans,” MIT said the company’s eventual aim is to “enable the individual to show and share” DNA information with people—doctors, scientists, researchers, even friends and family.

Just imagine: Instead of vacation-photo slideshows, you can gather around a smartphone to see images of your relatives’ deoxyribonucleic acid, set to music.

Attendees at next month’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco should keep an eye out for more details about Apple’s plans for two initial DNA studies.

In March, Cupertino unveiled ResearchKit, to let health and fitness apps communicate with each other, with your permission. Within days, thousands of iPhone owners signed up for medical research studies.

The software can access data like weight, blood pressure, glucose levels, and asthma inhaler use from the iOS Health app. It can also request other information, like access to the iPhones accelerometer, microphone, gyroscope, and GPS sensors.

Five early ResearchKit apps cover studies for asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease.

And now, perhaps, DNA, though Apple is not the first to tackle the genetic universe. In 2013, Google announced Calico—an effort to tackle aging and death by unlocking the body’s genetic code. Similarly, IBM’s Watson supercomputer was put to use providing insights based on users’ genes.

BlackBerry hopped on the bandwagon late last year, partnering with NantHealth to give doctors simplified access to genetic data via a secure browser for the BlackBerry Passport.

Source: PC MAG