Google wants to put together a ‘blueprint’ of healthy people

Google wants to collect genetic and molecular information from an initial 175 volunteers, in order to put together a blueprint of what a healthy person should look like. That should help researchers.

The search giant wants to use its computing power to search the information of the volunteers and find striking patterns, so-called biomarkers. The hope is that that information can help doctors find diseases earlier, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Initially, the medical data of 175 volunteers will be collected; later there should be many more. Google promises that the information will be treated anonymously, confidentially and used only for research purposes, and not shared with insurance companies, for example, who could use the private information to predict whether a customer has a higher risk of getting sick.

The subjects’ urine, blood, saliva and tears are collected. The genome is also mapped and Google wants to map how someone processes food. The search giant is working on devices that study participants can wear that will map even more, such as heart rate, heart rhythm and oxygen level.

At Google, a team of 75 to 100 people is working on the project, called Baseline. The company sets up independent committees, made up of people from university medical departments, to oversee how the data is used. It is unknown what Google itself expects to achieve with the plan, although the company may see a commercial target for the wearable devices.