The Landmark M.U.R.D.O.C.K. Study: “A Framingham Study for the Molecular Age”

The Measurement to Understand Reclassification of Disease Of Cabarrus/Kannapolis Study

Study Objective
Centered in Kannapolis, NC, under the leadership of Drs. Robert Califf, John McHutchison, and Geoff Ginsburg, and the operational management of Victoria Christian, the M.U.R.D.O.C.K. Study will rewrite medical textbooks by reclassifying health and disease using genomic technologies and electronic health records.

Our current understanding of disease is based upon crude characterization of clinical characteristics, radiographs, and laboratory testing that have evolved over generations. The M.U.R.D.O.C.K. Study will segment diseases by combining best-in-class clinical research, statistical, and operational methods with modern tools to characterize genes, proteins and metabolites, and modern technology to obtain and analyze medical images.

Improved classification will lead to demonstrable improvements in population health by allowing us to choose the best prevention and treatment strategies for individuals and for groups of people with similar characteristics. With the tools assembled by the DHMRI, the M.U.R.D.O.C.K. Study will generate exquisitely detailed data on individual patients that will engage the best minds in biomedical informatics and biostatistics to detect subtleties in disease that may have profound implications for prevention and medical management.

The participation of local healthcare providers and the Kannapolis/Cabarrus County community will enable the study to propose and test novel hypotheses in clinical trials and to push the envelope of biomedical informatics to aggregate molecular, clinical, and epidemiologic data. With this deeper insight, the study will be the first to comprehensively reclassify major diseases into subpopulations with discrete risk profiles and delineate fully informed strategies to manage patients as individuals and alter the health profile of populations. Initially, the study will seek to include academic medical centers and populations of both North and South Carolina. Ultimately, the study will reach out beyond this geography to broaden its scope of collaborators and research questions in order to fulfill its horizons.