Google’s Health Study Seeks 10,000 Volunteers to Give Up Their Medical Secrets
Are you willing to share your most intimate medical information with Google health spinout, Verily? Volunteers agree to undergo various invasive medical procedures and wear tracking devices for four years.
Verily today published a website that marks the launch of its founding idea, the Baseline Project, a multi-year study expected to cost more than $100 million that it says will search for clues to predicting heart disease and cancer.
Volunteers are being asked to submit to an unprecedented regimen of tests and physical monitoring. They’ll be asked to wear a heart-tracking watch that follows their pulse and movements in real time and will undergo a detailed workup of x-rays and heart scans, in addition to having their genomes deciphered and their blood tested in so-called liquid biopsies, which might be able to catch cancer early.
Each volunteer will be monitored for four years. As enrolling 10,000 people will take time, the full study could take a decade to complete.
…The study calls for collecting volunteers’ stool, saliva, and even tears. An initial workup of scans and tests will last two full days for some participants.
