Google startup Verily Life Sciences is expecting 10,000 people to sign up for a four-year study to find out why healthy people transition from health to illness. Verily, located in Mountain View, California, is partnering with Duke University and Stanford Medicine to enroll participants from different backgrounds in the next few months. The Project Baseline study will collect data from participants wearing the Study Watch (Verily's investigational device, available only for research purposes). The watch features sensors for “unobtrusive biosensing,” says Verily in a blog post, to measure vitals such as heart rate, ECG, electrodermal activity, as well as movement. Biospecimen samples, imaging, surveys and clinical visits will also be used to develop a reference, or a 'baseline', for wellness. Verily will also use the Study Watch in the Personalized Parkinson's Project, an observational study to identify patterns of progression in this disease. The pioneer in digital data gathering outside the clinical setting was Apple with its ResearchKit. This software tool works as an iPhone app feeds data directly to medical researchers as individuals go about their daily lives. Apple launched ResearchKit to encourage the millions of iPhone users to participate in clinical research studies (Nat. Biotechnol. 33, 322, 2015). Verily already has several partnerships with large pharma, and works with Paris-based Sanofi on devices for type 2 diabetes management, with GlaxoSmithKline on miniaturized electronic devices for peripheral nerve simulation (Nat. Biotechnol. 34, 904–908, 2016), with Johnson & Johnson on surgical robotics and with Novartis for glucose-checking contact lenses.