Apple’s Reach Reshapes Medical Research

Jeff Williams, the chief operating officer of Apple, said the company hoped the studies would bolster the understanding of women’s, heart and hearing health. Apple also hopes to use the study data to improve its products or create new ones.

“We have a noise meter on people’s Apple Watches,” Mr. Williams said. “If we can help them understand the sound exposure in their environment and help them avoid the problem, or at least mitigate the problem, with hearing loss, that’s a huge contribution to society.”

But the studies reliant on Apple devices have inherent limitations, because owners of the company’s products are not representative of the general American population. People who use iPhones have a median income of about $89,000 compared with just $64,510 for Android users, according to recent data from Comscore. Among the Apple Watch users in the Apple Heart Study, there was a lower percentage of women, African-Americans, Latinos and people aged 65 or older as compared to census data on the general population.

Professor Williams of Harvard said that the women’s health study would ask participants for demographic information and adapt its methodology to account for any underrepresented groups.

There are also some concerns that Apple, which has already reshaped how people live, communicate and entertain themselves, is pursuing yet another way to influence society, this time through health.

“The broader point here is the fact that Apple has control over the app store, that Apple has connections with all of the people that have Apple iPhones, and that Apple gets to make a lot of decisions about how you collect the data, about how to notify people to be a part of the study,” said Matt Stoller, the author of a new book, “Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.”

Whatever the potential health benefits, he said, “it’s still an extraordinary concentration of power in Apple’s hands.”

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