Man ik hou van Google's lange termijn denken!
Google's New Moonshot Project: the Human Body | Wall Street Journal
Called Baseline Study, the project will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people—and later thousands more—to create what the company hopes will be the fullest picture of what a healthy human being should be.
The early-stage project is run by Andrew Conrad, a 50-year-old molecular biologist who pioneered cheap, high-volume tests for HIV in blood-plasma donations. Dr. Conrad joined Google X—the company's research arm—in March 2013, and he has built a team of about 70-to-100 experts from fields including physiology, biochemistry, optics, imaging and molecular biology.
The Google X Life Sciences group is developing more wearable devices that may continuously collect other data, such as heart rates, heart rhythms and oxygen levels. These devices will be worn by Baseline participants, according to Robert Califf, vice chancellor at Duke University's School of Medicine, who is working on the study.
Dr. Conrad said Baseline participants will likely wear a smart contact lens that has already been developed by his team so their glucose levels can be monitored continuously for the study.
Until recently, research like this was too expensive and time-consuming. But the cost of collecting genetic and molecular information has plummeted. It costs about $1,000 to sequence a human genome now, down from around $100 million in the early part of this century. Meanwhile, increases in computing power mean the search for patterns in the resulting data mountain is much quicker. Unlike most Google X projects, baseline isn't supposed to deliver a specific commercial product or service but Dr. Conrad expects medicine will be improved by the mountains of new information.