Verily — which used to be known as Google’s Life Sciences division — has (re)launched the Project Baseline with a bold goal to expand our knowledge about what human health looks like.
Originally announced in 2014 in collaboration with Duke University and Stanford University, the project is now entering the next big phase, moving from 200 to 10,000 healthy participants who will be invited to take part in a four-year long study. During that period, researchers will collect genetic data, blood samples, medical images, and other information from the participants.
The studies are starting in the San Francisco Bay Area and North Carolina, with the idea to expand to other places. Ultimately, the goal is to have nationally-representative sample of anonymized data that will let researchers from across the industry play with it, and hopeful uncover things that will be useful for all of us.
One of those useful things could be “an early discovery platform,” according to the Project Baseline advisory board member Adrian Hernandez, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Duke. He believes that it might be possible to detect subtle changes in some areas — biomarkers, behavior, anything really — before a disease takes hold.
On the other hand Stanford’s Sam Gambhir, who is also an advisory board member, thinks that it is a bit difficult to say what a study like this is for until well after the fact.
At the end of the day, Alphabet — as a publicly-traded company — is looking to make money out of this project (and other projects, for that matter). Chances are it will sell findings from the study to interested parties, or develop new solutions that could help its partners advance in their fields.
At this stage it’s not clear whether the newly unveiled Study Watch will have a role to play in Project Baseline, but with its certified credentials certainly make it a viable candidate to follow participants’ whereabouts once they are outside of the hospital setting.
We’ll be watching this space and get back to you as soon as we have something new to add. Stay tuned in the meantime…