STUDYING PARKINSON’S DISEASE

How can an iPhones contribute to medical research? Apple highlighted five new apps that empower users by letting them chart their data and see trends and that help researchers recruit participants for their studies.

For example, the mPower app (free) is focused on Parkinson's disease. One challenge is that the disease is so varied, affecting people in different ways and progressing at varied rates. Researchers need a clearer picture of what's happening because there's so much about Parkinson's they still don't understand. Ideally, they'd have data from thousands of people on how the disease is progressing and how that corre-