The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is initiating a project to identify a slew of biomarkers that point to the presence of a variety of diseases and other chemical signatures that are related to healthy body function. The team will initially collect genetic and molecular information from 175 volunteers using many tests that sample bodily fluids. Later on, the plan is to expand the project, called Baseline Study, to include thousands of people and to identify what a “healthy human” is. This knowledge is aimed at identifying which people should change certain aspects of their lifestyles to account for greater risk of disease, as well as providing new diagnostic tools for physicians to diagnose diseases at their earliest stages.
Google is seriously gearing up for this, with the leader of the project, Andrew Conrad, hiring about 100 experts in imaging, biochemistry, and other fields, according to WSJ. Once the data is available, the company will use its incredible computing resources to crunch the numbers looking for interesting patterns. While there will be folks concerned with Google having such private information about individuals, the company has promised to de-identify the participants in the study to preserve the privacy of their health information.
More at the Wall Street Journal: Google’s New Moonshot Project: the Human Body…