Dive Brief:
- Sanofi on Monday announced that it has struck a research pact with Google's life sciences arm in a collaborative effort aimed at improving diabetes care and maintenance.
- According to a press release, the companies "will explore how to improve diabetes care by developing new tools that bring together many of the previously siloed pieces of diabetes management and enable new kinds of interventions," ostensibly through a combination of wearable devices, data analytics, and monitoring/maintenance of blood glucose levels, therapeutic regimens, and patient input.
- Google recently announced that the company will be reorganizing into a larger umbrella firm, Alphabet, which will house Google as well as multiple other companies whose efforts diverge from the tech giant's core services. Those companies will include the life sci outfit Calico, Google X, and Google Ventures.
Dive Insight:
The ultimate goal of this collaborative effort is to shift away from what the companies describe as "episodic, event-driven" diabetes maintenance to "continuous, value-based care."
In other words, Google and Sanofi are playing into an ongoing trend in pharma to harness the power of wearable devices and real-time data monitoring in an effort to improve compliance and smoothe out patients' medication regimens (for instance, Roche has developed a smart phone app that will be used to track Parkinson's patients' symptoms during a drug trial). Part of this effort might involve creating new technologies that better monitor patients.
"With new technologies emerging to provide a more continuous and real-time view of a patient's health, we can see the promise for more proactive and effective ways to control diabetes," said Andy Conrad, CEO of the life sciences team at Google, in a statement. "Together with Sanofi, we believe diabetes management can be simpler and more convenient, which may help patients achieve an improved quality of life."
Google has struck big research arrangements with several major pharma companies and research institutions, including AbbVie and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.