In the past week, two new ResearchKit studies have launched. One of the studies, developed at Japan-based Keio University School of Medicine, aims to use health data for the early detection of arrhythmia and cerebral infarction. The other study, conducted by the COPD Foundation, aims to collect data from people with COPD.

Atrial fibrillation can increase the risk of cerebral infarction by approximately five times and 20 percent of patients that are hospitalized for cerebral infarction carry the risk of atrial fibrillation, according to Keio University. Researchers plan to use data collected from smartphones, wearable devices, and apps, integrated into the app, to diagnose and prevent atrial fibrillation.

Keio University's study, called Heart and Brain, collects data through survey questions about users' risk of cerebral infarction and quality of life.

The app also prompts users to perform a motor assessment test, which may be helpful in detecting cerebral infarction, and provide data collected by the sensors in the iPhone and Apple Watch.

Data collected from the study will be used to publish research focused on the early detection of arrhythmia and cerebral infarction at academic meetings and in journals.

The other study, conducted by the COPD Foundation, a nonprofit with offices in Miami and DC, aims to enroll people with COPD in the organization's COPD Patient-Powered Research Network (COPD PPRN), a research registry. The COPD Foundation aims to enroll 75,000 people in the COPD PPRN initiative with the help of its ResearchKit app, called StopCOPD. The app was developed in partnership with Seattle-based company DatStat.

“I am extremely pleased we are able to introduce the StopCOPD app," COPD Foundation President and Cofounder John W. Walsh said in a statement. "We are constantly looking for ways to engage, empower, and inform both the patient and research community and this platform enables us to reach an even greater number of people than ever before using the most advanced and sophisticated technology... We are delighted that we are able to offer a new app for COPD, a lung disease which is the third leading cause of death in America.”

StopCOPD includes surveys as well as tests, like motor activities, fitness tracking, and cognition. In the future, StopCOPD aims to offer comparative data so that participants can view how their data compares to aggregated data from other participants.

While there are no existing COPD-focused ResearchKit studies, one of the first studies to launch on the platform was Asthma Health, developed by The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and LifeMap Solutions. With the addition of these two apps, there are now at least 15 ResearchKit apps.