Downsizing Google's Dream

Free from its search giant parent, biotech Verily takes a more modest approach. “I hear that, and it screams privacy”

- Caroline Chen and Mark Bergen

The first of 10,000 volunteers will soon walk into labs at Stanford and Duke to subject themselves to two days of tests. Each will provide a blood sample for DNA sequencing and a stool sample for a gut bacteria scan, get a chest X-ray and an electrocardiogram, and take a psychological assessment. Participants will be asked if they’re willing to share electronic health records and insurance claims. They may also be asked to share records of phone, text, and social media activity. All will go home with a special wristwatch meant to track their heart rate, sweat, and number of steps for the next four years.

The study—called Baseline, as in a starting point—opened on 19 April. It marks the first serious public test for Verily Life Sciences LLC, formerly Google Life Sciences, the search company’s biotech arm. While Verily has separated from Google’s internet business within the Alphabet Inc. holding company, it’s following its former parent’s approach to data by collecting and organising as much information as it can about our bodies—data it hopes will guide better health decisions.

Baseline tests alone will likely run at least $300 million before administrative costs, says Sam Gambhir, the professor running Stanford’s part of it. (Verily declined to comment.) While that sounds ambitious, it’s much more modest than the missions Verily promoted when it was part of Google. Just five years ago the division promised projects such as glucose-monitoring contact lenses and all-in-one medical scanners; those remain in the lab. Former employees say the internal code name for the life sciences division was Panacea—cureall. No one calls it that anymore.