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Longitudinal study launched to help determine transition from health to disease
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Verily Life Sciences LLC announced the launch of a 4-year study in partnership with Duke University School of Medicine and Stanford Medicine to gain a better understanding of the transition of an individual being healthy to a becoming ill.
According to a press release from the company, the longitudinal study will collect phenotypic health data from approximately 10,000 patients to develop a reference of good health.
“Currently, most of what we see as treating physicians are short snapshots in time of an individual and primarily after they are already ill. We are effectively missing a lot of valuable information years prior to illness,” Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, chair of radiology at Stanford and director of the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection, said in the release. “We’re dealing with illness in the absence of a well-defined reference of healthy biochemistry and this underscores the criticality of what we hope to achieve here. By focusing on the health of a broad population, we can eventually have a meaningful impact on the well-being of patients around the world.”
According to Verily, Project Baseline will collect comprehensive data on those who are of exceptional health, at risk for disease and already afflicted. This dataset will include clinical, molecular, imaging, self-reported, behavioral, environmental, sensor and various other health-related measurements.
Data will be collected at Stanford and Duke University study sites through clinical visits, wrist-worn monitors, and participation in surveys and polls which can be taken via smartphone, computer or call center, according to the release.
“With recent advances at the intersection of science and technology, we have the opportunity to characterize human health with unprecedented depth and precision,” Jessica Mega, MD, MPH, chief medical officer of Verily, said in the release. “The Project Baseline study is the first step on our journey to comprehensively map human health. Partnering with Duke, Stanford and our community of collaborators, we hope to create a dataset, tools and technologies that benefit research ecosystem and humankind more broadly.”
Disclosures: Gambhir reports no relevant financial disclosures. Mega is an employee of Verily.