The Li Ka Shing Foundation has announced a $3 million grant to the Stanford School of Medicine in support of a big data initiative designed to improve human health and lower healthcare costs.

The grant will support a collaborative effort between Stanford and the University of Oxford to accelerate the discovery of new drugs and insights into diseases through the analysis of large data sets and the development of personalized low-cost therapies for patients. The two institutions also plan to develop a mobile application that collects biometric and other health data in real time and can actively monitor patients recovering from surgery or prevent an adverse health event. In turn, the data collected by the app will be combined with other data, including genomic-sequencing data and electronic medical records, that scientists, using bioinformatics, can use to predict which patients are at higher risk for certain diseases and which could benefit from earlier intervention.

"In the world of medicine, we have a tsunami of data crashing over us, including electronic patient records, DNA sequencing, biological data on disease mechanisms, clinical trials, medical imaging, and pharmaceutical records," said Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine. "We can put all these large data sets to work to identify innovative approaches to treatment and to improving access to care."

A longtime supporter of Stanford, Li has now pledged or provided more than $37 million to the School of Medicine through his foundation, including funding for the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge. "We stand on the precipice of realizing the promise of big data in transforming the future of biomedical sciences," said Li, "and I am very excited that our foundation can enable these two eminent institutions to join forces and bring us to the next level of discovery that will revolutionize patient care and treatments to solve today's health-related challenges."