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| Google's Andrew Conrad |
Google ($GOOG) is teaming up with French drugmaker Sanofi ($SNY) for a diabetes monitoring collaboration, furthering the tech giant's foray into medical devices and its commitment to developing innovative products for the disease.
Google's Life Sciences division, along with Sanofi, will work on finding better ways to collect, analyze and process multiple sources of information impacting diabetes, with the end goal of finding new technologies that could improve outcomes for patients. Ultimately, the pair will create devices that would combine multiple parts of diabetes monitoring into one system, with sensor devices and information on medication regimens, blood glucose levels and patient-reported data, the companies said in a statement. Neither side is revealing financial details.
A partnership with Sanofi makes sense, as Google can draw on Sanofi's experience making insulin to design smaller, Internet-connected devices that could suggest or adjust insulin dosages in respond to blood-sugar readings or doctor-prescribed patient exercise regimens, Life Sciences head Andrew Conrad told The Wall Street Journal. "With Sanofi we can complete the picture of how diabetes unfolds and try to interrupt that development through a proactive and preventive approach," he said, as quoted by the newspaper.
Diabetes is expected to affect about 592 million people worldwide by 2035, according to numbers from the International Diabetes Federation cited by the WSJ, presenting a lucrative opportunity for companies developing next-generation approaches for treating the disease.
And Google is eager to cash in on the market. The company has already embarked on a series of diabetes-focused initiatives in the past year, joining forces with pharma and med tech companies to expand its reach.
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| Google and Novartis are teaming up to develop Google's "smart lens" technology for glucose monitoring.--Courtesy of Google |
In July 2014, Google said it would team up with Novartis ($NVS) to develop smart contact lenses for diabetes and intraocular medical conditions. Earlier this month, the company announced it would work with Dexcom ($DXCM) to roll out cheaper, miniaturized glucose monitors with bandage-sized sensors that allow individuals to check their blood sugar levels on the cloud.
Meanwhile, Life Sciences is preparing for life as a standalone company under Google's re-conceptualized company, Alphabet. With Conrad at the helm, the spinout will continue to scout out promising patient monitoring projects, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a blog post.
"While the reporting structure will be different, their goal remains the same. They'll continue to work with other life sciences companies to move new technologies from early stage R&D to clinical testing--and, hopefully--transform the way we detect, prevent, and manage disease," Brin said.
- here's the statement
- read the WSJ story (sub. req.)
Special Report: The 5 top trends for med tech in 2014 - Google goes after med tech, along with other VCs