The first four apps with Apple CareKit hit the App Store

The first four iOS apps with Apple's new CareKit framework are now available for download, just one month after the company announced its latest effort to empower people to play an active role and better track their own medical conditions.

While developers can now add CareKit's functionalities to all apps starting Thursday, Apple has already approved and pushed out CareKit for the following apps: One Drop for diabetes management, Start for depression medication management and two apps from Glow related to reproductive (Glow Nurture) and maternal health (Glow Baby).

The new CareKit tools, which can be added to new or existing apps, give patients tracking conditions an easy way to monitor their symptoms, remember when to take medications and what to expect along the way. The efforts aim to take away some of the confusion and anxiety from adjusting to new conditions, recovering after surgery or monitoring progress. And since so many are carrying around an iPhone anyway, Apple wants to help with that process.

"I grew up in an era where health happened to you; it was very passive," Apple COO Jeff Williams told Mashable last month. "You would go to the doctor and they’d tell you to do something, and you’d do it. I was a passenger. We think one of the biggest changes we can make in health care is to encourage people to play an active role. … We view that we have an opportunity and an obligation to help.”

The CareKit tools include a reminder to take meds, a way to track symptoms, an insights dashboard and a way to share information with doctors.

The CareKit open source comes with four Apple-designed modules: one for personal care plans and actions items (i.e. take medicine or switch a bandage), a symptom tracker, an insight dashboard to show how treatments are working and a portal to share and email information (via a PDF report card within the app) to health information with doctors or family members. As you add in information into the CareKit-supported app, heart-shaped tracking tools fill up. See below for how it works.

In a demo shown to Mashable, the OneDrop colorful diabetes-tracking app seamlessly integrates CareKit's new tools. It's now possible to add blood glucose levels, carb intake and daily activity, as well as giving patients a way to track stress, energy, happiness and confidence at any given time. It also allows users to rate how much pain they have that day, as a good indicator whether or not certain medicine is working.

"We also have a social news feed, much like you'd see on other social networks, where people can monitor how other people are doing real-time, so you don't feel alone," founder Jeff Dachis said. "This also allows decision-support factor and people can see what others are eating, their glucose levels and you can cheer others on."

All data can be pulled into Apple's Health app, which houses everything from sleep and fitness tracking data from third-party apps to medical information from other tracking platforms.

Of course, Apple ensures all CareKit (and ResearchKit, Apple's similar framework for medical researchers) data stored to the iOS device itself is encrypted. Users decide to share — or not share — the data with third-party apps, which puts the patient in control. 

While this certainly looks like the future of health tracking, CareKit's success is largely dependent on apps integrating the tools and doctors working with patients to help monitor progress via the data and make suggestions.

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