Getting Started, Development

Background Health Research Task Entitlement

This entitlement would allow a developer — if the user consents — to process data from HealthKit, SensorKit, and/or a Bluetooth device while the developer’s app is in the background, thus preparing data essential to a health research study.

Overview

A time-consuming, necessary processing task that runs while the app is in the background to prepare data essential to a health research study. This is important for research studies where ongoing data collection or analysis occurs in the background without the need for continuous user interaction.

Requirements

BGHealthResearchTask requires iOS 17.1 or later.

Request the entitlement

If you’d like to use BGHealthResearchTask, you’ll need to have an entitlement assigned to your developer account. Account Holders in the Apple Developer Program can submit an entitlement request for the BGHealthResearchTask entitlement. Requests are granted per bundle ID (the app’s unique identifier) and assigned entitlements can only be used with the single binary associated with the bundle ID.

In order to be eligible:

  • Your App must be exclusively to conduct health research;
  • Your study must have approval from an Independent Ethics Committee (IEC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to ensure participant safety, welfare, and right;
  • You must intend to publish or otherwise make findings from the research study publicly available;
  • Your App needs the ability to process and/or upload health research study data in the background without ongoing user engagement.
  • You must confirm that other background processing capabilities (e.g. HealthKit observer queries, BGProcessingTask) are insufficient for your App’s use case.

Information you’ll need to provide

App and Developer Information

  • Team Name (Legal Entity)
  • Team ID
  • App Name
  • App Bundle ID (the app's unique identifier)

Study Details

  • Study Title
  • Principle Investigator Name and Contact Information

Usage Details

  • Confirm your App is exclusively used for conducting health research
  • Provide proof of IEC/IRB approval for your research study
  • Confirm you intend to publish or otherwise make available your research study
  • Confirm your App cannot use other sources of background processing capability (e.g. HealthKit observer queries, BGProcessingTask)
  • Describe use case(s) for using the Background Health Research Task in your App

Documentation and resources

Submit a request for Background Health Research Task entitlement