Stanford's faculty, students, and collaborative environment make it the ideal place to take on ambitious, forward-looking challenges. With the goal of transforming human health, initiative leaders have identified three themes to guide and inform the venture and link its five program areas.

Imaging—Seeing the Problem

Advanced imaging techniques, some developed at Stanford, afford possibility for improved study, diagnosis, and treatment of many human ills—from cancer to depression.

Invention—Making New Tools

Advances in human health frequently depend on advances in technology, and the initiative aims to speed the pace of development for new and transformative tools—from nanometer-scale robots that can live inside the body and target and repair diseased tissues to devices to improve exploration of the human genome.

Intergration—The Power of Information Technology

Enormous untapped opportunities exist to extend Stanford's successes in information technology to the realm of human health. Through the initiative, we will develop new technologies and do much more with existing ones—from helping to make medical records more readily accessible to tracking, collecting, and analyzing the vast amount of available medical data modern health research is producing.