Abstract:

Health and disease reflect the complex interplay of biology, environment, socioeconomic and cultural influences, and time. In particular, the characteristics that result in transitions between health and disease for a given illness, or that herald the coming of these transitions, are poorly understood and only superficially characterized. A more profound understanding of health and disease state transitions will allow more focused preventive measures, provide opportunities for monitoring and targeted preemptive interventions, and inform the development of new therapeutics and diagnostics.

As a longitudinal cohort study, the Baseline Study will extensively characterize participants at baseline and serially using a battery of clinical, imaging, psychosocial, behavioral, socioeconomic, geospatial, physiometric, and molecular tools. The objectives of the Baseline Study are to use this information to:

1. Characterize human systems biology by measuring multiple systems simultaneously and longitudinally
2. Define normal values for a given parameter in the context of the other measured parameters
3. Predict outcomes that are meaningful to patients (cardiovascular events, new onset or recurrence of cancer, and functional status and quality of life)
4. Validate wearable human monitoring devices against well-characterized physiological measurements and clinical, quality-of-life, and functional outcomes
5. Characterize transitions in disease state for cardiovascular disease and cancer, including quality of life and functional status

The data from this study, when integrated analytically will yield multi-dimensional characterizations that are expected to generate testable hypotheses that can be evaluated in silico as well as in future prospective validation studies or clinical trials.