For a company that has declared it's not interested in becoming a health care company, Google appears to have a very healthy interest in knowing all there is to know about the human body.
In what reports are calling an ambitious undertaking, which is likely an understatement given it's Google, after all, the search company is launching a baseline study, which Google claims has never been done before.
"It may sound counterintuitive, but by studying health, we might someday be better able to understand disease," said Andrew Conrad, a molecular biologist who is leading the study at Google X. "This research could give us clues about how the human body stays healthy or becomes sick, which could in turn unlock insights into how diseases could be better detected or treated."
The study is in its pilot phase with 175 healthy participants enrolled. The study will conduct exams typically done to examine health, including blood and urine tests. Google is searching for patterns in health information with the goal of helping individuals avoid potential health issues rather than solving any specific health issue.
The company said the project is not product driven but a contribution to the science world as it plans to make the data available to health care researchers.
Collecting and analyzing all that data is very likely going to draw scrutiny to Google once again given lawmakers, privacy advocates and federal agencies are already trying to determine what rules and laws are needed to boost consumer data protection and privacy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Duke University and Stanford University medical schools will have use of the data once the study is in full process.
Conrad, who is known for developing low-cost HIV blood-donation tests, is directing the initial phase of the study.
"With any complex system, the notion has always been there to proactively address problems," Conrad said. "That's not revolutionary. We are just asking the question: If we really wanted to be proactive, what would we need to know? You need to know what the fixed, well-running thing should look like."
Google recently announced it's developing a smart contact lens that could help patients regulate health issues such as blood sugar levels. As Tech Times reported, the Google lab is developing the wearable technology device to measure blood glucose using human tears.
"Over the years, many scientists have investigated various body fluids -- such as tears -- in the hopes of finding an easier way for people to track their glucose levels. But as you can imagine, tears are hard to collect and study. At Google[x], we wondered if miniaturized electronics -- think: chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair -- might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy," project co-founders Babak Parviz and Brian Otis wrote on Google's official blog.
