Google X’s “Baseline Study” applies big data techniques to healthcare

Contando Estrelas

Google X has launched a new moonshot called "Baseline Study," which is intended to help us better understand the human body. Google wants to collect genetic and molecular information that it will use to create a picture of a healthy human. The project will initially start with 175 people and will later expand to "thousands" more. Unlike most Google X projects, Google's hasn't come out and talked about this one; all the information we have comes from a Wall Street Journal report.

The plan is to collect a massive amount of information on healthy people and to use that data to proactively identify and address health problems. Most medicine today is reactive rather than focusing on the prevention of illness—something goes wrong and then you get treatment. Once Google has a good baseline of what a healthy human looks like, that data can be compared to data from other individuals to discover potential problems before symptoms become obvious.

Larry Page has frequently spoken about the possibility of using big data techniques to improve healthcare while lamenting that privacy laws limit searches through medical data. With the Baseline Study, it seems that Google intends to build a database of its own that can avoid these limits. With all this data, Google will use its big data prowess to search for "biomarkers," or specific molecules that indicate something is amiss. Google won't have free rein over the data, though—the Institutional Review Boards of Duke and Stanford University will review how it intends to use the information.