Medable has announced the launch of Axon, a platform that will enable clinicians & researchers to build their own ResearchKit apps without writing a single line of code.

Since the launch of ResearchKit last year, we’ve seen studies across the country launch studying everything from the effects of concussions to patients with left ventricular assist devices. There are several developers that have been at the forefront of these studies, including LifeMap and THREAD Research which have both supported multiple ResearchKit studies.

Medable is among these emerging class of companies that have a depth of experience in this kind of research. We’ve previously covered their work, including the USC Virtual Care Clinic and a ResearchKit study involving patients with ventricular assist device.

Medable’s new Axon platform is a do-it-yourself platform for clinicians and researchers to develop and deploy ResearchKit apps without actually having to write code. According to Medable,

Axon provides an easy to use, point and click interface that connects ResearchKit — Apple’s open source user interface for mobile clinical studies — and additional capabilities, with Medable’s HIPAA compliant platform to rapidly create and launch clinical study applications, without writing any code, and easily submit to the App Store. Axon enables disease prediction models to be generated from study data, paving the way for algorithmic and personalized medicine — enabling health professionals to become true innovators.

Pricing is based on the number of investigators and apps. For example, one app for one primary investigator will run you $2,500/month. There also appear to be some bulk pricing options for institutions. So while it’s not something that anyone can just do on a whim, it does fall more into the range of a small internal grant or discretionary funds.

It will be interesting to see whether this kind of tool ends up being an inflection point for digital health studies. It’s unclear at this point how flexible Axon will be and what sort of third party integrations it will offer to extend data collection. On the other hand, it could certainly simplify the launch of a new study from development to approval by an IRB to actually launching in the app store. And hopefully it will come with some strong resources to guide aspiring researchers in effectively tailoring their medical apps to their study needs.

Source: Medable