Vision
We finally have the power to transform human health.
By harnessing the power of large-scale computing and data analysis, the Stanford Biomedical Data Science Initiative is delving into every aspect of health and disease, from the molecular mechanics of individual cells to the behavioral dynamics of entire populations.
We’re integrating genomics into everyday care.
Starting with patients at Stanford, we’re adding genomic and other “omic” data to medical records to deepen our understanding of each patient’s biology and how it responds to everything, from drugs to the environment.
We’re using mobile data to improve health outcomes.
By using mobile data, physicians and researchers can get an accurate picture that evolves in real time, and instantly communicate with and get input from patients and research participants.
We’re combining different types of data — clinical, immunological, social, environmental, etc., to create a medical data set of unprecedented breadth, depth, scale, and dynamism. And we’re building tools and writing algorithms to mine this data for fresh insights.
We’re developing intelligent systems that can quickly analyze vast amounts of unstructured data like images and physicians’ notes. We’re integrating everything to give us the most detailed and comprehensive picture of human health ever seen.
We’re making it all searchable in real time, so physicians and researchers can have accurate outcomes information on huge numbers of patients just like the ones they’re treating or studying, right at their fingertips.
We’re accelerating drug discovery
We’re accelerating drug discovery by using large-scale data analysis to model molecular interactions and find new uses for the existing 5,000+ drugs already approved by the FDA. And the introduction of these new treatments will take a fraction of the time and cost it took to approve them originally.
Stanford Medicine has already earned a global reputation for this work, including our discovery that Lipitor, a well-known drug that has lowered cholesterol in millions by blocking a liver enzyme, can also jam signals that cause a patient’s immune system to reject a transplanted organ.
Other examples include our findings that an antidepressant that’s been in use for years kills lung cancer cells and an off-patent antiepileptic therapy holds promise for treating inflammatory bowel disease.
We’re creating a new breed of scientist to capture the astonishing potential of biomedical data — experts with the talent and training to work at the intersection of the life and quantitative sciences.
Stanford is uniquely capable of creating this hybrid profession. In virtually every discipline that touches biomedical data science, including computer science, biomedical research, imaging, genomics, engineering, law, business, design, education, epidemiology, demography, economics, and ethics, we have the intellectual capital to fuel the advancement of this burgeoning field.
These students will change everything.