Transforming Human Health

Over the last 50 years, life expectancy increased at the astonishing rate of five hours each day. Scientific discoveries have been translated into instruments that physicians use to see inside a woman's womb and monitor the health of a fetus long before birth. Children are healthy because breakthroughs in biology and chemistry led to vaccines and antibiotics. Scientists and engineers have invented drugs and devices like pacemakers to slow disease and sustain life. Science and medicine gave doctors ways to replace parts of the body entirely: a new lens to restore sight, a metal joint instead of arthritic bone, a donated kidney in place of a diseased one. Methods to diagnose, treat, and prevent a whole host of diseases and disorders have improved dramatically. But this is only the beginning. The future will bring advances in human health unlike anything we could have imagined 50 or even five years ago.

Too often, physicians today can only intervene when disease appears; in the future, new discoveries will let us guide the body in healing itself or prevent many diseases from occurring in the first place. Stanford aims to lead the way to this future through the Initiative on Human Health, an ambitious plan to bring about a transformation in human well-being and health care. The close proximity of our world-class schools of science, engineering, and medicine is encouraging remarkable collaborations that integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines.

Multidisciplinary teams of scientists, doctors, engineers, and social scientists around the campus are working at the frontiers of knowledge on countless projects, all of which share the ultimate aim of unlocking the secrets of the human body and learning new ways to heal it and keep it healthy. These collaborations are solving complex problems that could never be addressed by traditional disciplines working in isolation.

The university is concentrating its efforts in five key areas: the evolving multidisciplinary biosciences (Bio-X), bioengineering, cancer, stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, and the neurosciences. These are programs where exciting work is already in progress, where the potential for breakthroughs is great, and where Stanford has tremendous strengths.

Initiative leaders have identified three themes that are generating the momentum for transformative research and teaching in all of these programs: imaging, invention, and integration.

Stanford researchers are on the verge of perfecting imaging technology to peer deep inside the body, into a patient's very cells, so clinicians can track down and stop disease before it takes hold. Others are mapping every byway in the brain, with the goal of seeing how it works, what happens when it goes wrong, and how to fix it.

Advances in medicine depend on scientific discovery and on technology to translate discovery into clinical realities. Stanford researchers are devising extraordinary tools and devices that promise to aid in the transformation of human health. Some of these inventions—nanoscale robots, synthetic "made-to-order" molecules—were the stuff of science fiction just a few years ago.

Research on human health is generating vast quantities of data that have little value without integration. Stanford scientists are decoding secrets of the human genome, for instance, and Stanford social scientists are gathering data on populations and behavior. The ability to find, analyze, and use the enormous amount of technical information acquired from many disciplines will be fundamental to making discoveries and assuring those discoveries improve health. Strides in information technology are essential if we are to extract what is important from mountains of data.

Transforming human health will require unprecedented levels of collaboration and ingenuity. We believe Stanford is in a unique position to lead this transformation, and to train the next generation of scientists, social scientists, doctors, and engineers to take us still further. We invite you to join us in making this transformation possible.

	Michael T. Longaker Director, Program in Regenerative Medicine Deane P. and Louise Mitchell Professor in the   School of Medicine
	Brian A. Wandell Chair, Stanford Psychology Isaac and Madeline Stein Family Professor

Discover more about the human health initiative in action on the Stanford StoryBank.

Stanford on iTunes U offers a wide range of Stanford Challenge–related digital audio, including programs about the Initiative on Human Health. Requires iTunes. More >>