The thing you're describing is almost exactly a university medical center: a non-profit staffed with doctors and researchers running research projects. They also have the technical and administrative staff to run them properly.
Most professors at a medical school don't lecture very much, but are instead responsible for running research programs like the one you're describing. They either do this on their own, or as part of bigger consortiums. I'm mostly interested in brain stuff, where there are some big imaging+analysis collaborations. The Human Connectome Project collected about 1200 subjects' MRIs, plus a bunch of related health data. The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initative is doing something similar, with a focus on neurodegeneration. I would imagine there are similar ones for the rest of the body.
Most people start on these projects as grad students, coming from biomedical programs (Neuro, Bio, Psych), engineering, physics, CS, or even math, depending on exactly what you want to do. There are other career tracks though--some people get hired on as research assistants or staff programmers, either attached to large programs or as permanent staff at big universities or institutes. These positions are a little harder to find, especially since RA can mean anything from "will train" to "needs PhD + 5 years experience". They often pay a bit better (though not tech industry levels), but have a bit less freedom.
The US actually funds a ton of biomedical research through the NIH (and NSF and DARPA), and is probably one of the better bets for running large, expensive studies.
Most professors at a medical school don't lecture very much, but are instead responsible for running research programs like the one you're describing. They either do this on their own, or as part of bigger consortiums. I'm mostly interested in brain stuff, where there are some big imaging+analysis collaborations. The Human Connectome Project collected about 1200 subjects' MRIs, plus a bunch of related health data. The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initative is doing something similar, with a focus on neurodegeneration. I would imagine there are similar ones for the rest of the body.
Most people start on these projects as grad students, coming from biomedical programs (Neuro, Bio, Psych), engineering, physics, CS, or even math, depending on exactly what you want to do. There are other career tracks though--some people get hired on as research assistants or staff programmers, either attached to large programs or as permanent staff at big universities or institutes. These positions are a little harder to find, especially since RA can mean anything from "will train" to "needs PhD + 5 years experience". They often pay a bit better (though not tech industry levels), but have a bit less freedom.
The US actually funds a ton of biomedical research through the NIH (and NSF and DARPA), and is probably one of the better bets for running large, expensive studies.