SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Verily Life Sciences LLC, an Alphabet company, in partnership with Duke University School of Medicine and Stanford Medicine, announced today the initiation of the Project Baseline study, a longitudinal study that will collect broad phenotypic health data from approximately 10,000 participants, who will each be followed over the course of at least four years. The study is the first initiative of Project Baseline, a broader effort designed to develop a well-defined reference, or “baseline,” of health as well as a rich data platform that may be used to better understand the transition from health to disease and identify additional risk factors for disease. Beyond this initial study, Project Baseline endeavors to test and develop new tools and technologies to access, organize and activate health information.

“With recent advances at the intersection of science and technology, we have the opportunity to characterize human health with unprecedented depth and precision,” said Jessica Mega, MD, MPH, chief medical officer of Verily. “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 the research ecosystem and humankind more broadly.”

The Project Baseline study will begin enrolling participants at the Stanford and Duke study sites within the next few months. The committed study sites at this time include Duke’s sites in Durham and Kannapolis, North Carolina; Stanford’s site in Stanford, California; and the California Health and Longevity Institute in Westlake Village, California. The scientific executive committee is also exploring additional study sites across the United States.

Each site will gather deep datasets on participants through repeat clinical visits; daily use of a wrist-worn investigational device and other sensors; and regular participation in interactive surveys and polls by using a smartphone, computer or call center. Data collected will include clinical, imaging, self-reported, physical, environmental, behavioral, sensor, molecular, genetic and other health-related measurements. Biospecimens collected will include blood and saliva, among others.

One of the focus areas of the Project Baseline study is participant involvement, which includes development of a participant committee and the option to receive certain health data and test results, participate in conference calls with members of the study team and evaluate new tools and technologies.

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