Date: 2016-09-12
Type of information: Joint-venture agreement
Compound:
Company: Sanofi (France) Google Life Sciences, now Verily Life Sciences (USA - CA) Onduo (UA - MA)
Therapeutic area: Metabolic diseases
Type agreement: collaboration joint-venture
Action mechanism:
Disease: type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes
Details: * On August 31, 2015, Sanofi and the life sciences team at Google announced that they are collaborating to improve care and outcomes for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The collaboration will pair Sanofi's leadership in diabetes treatments and devices with Google's expertise in analytics, miniaturized electronics and low power chip design. 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. This includes health indicators such as blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels, patient-reported information, medication regimens and sensor devices. Sanofi and the life sciences team at Google will combine their respective expertise in science and technology to work on better ways to collect, analyze and understand multiple sources of information impacting diabetes. The hope is that it will be easier for patients to successfully manage their diabetes, which would reduce the risk of complications, improve outcomes and ultimately lower costs.
Financial terms:
Latest news: * On September 12, 2016, Sanofi and Verily Life Sciences (formerly Google Life Sciences) announced the launch of Onduo, a joint venture created through Sanofi and Verily’s diabetes-focused collaboration. The joint venture is based in Kendall Square in Cambridge. Onduo’s mission is to help people with diabetes live full, healthy lives by developing comprehensive solutions that combine devices, software, medicine, and professional care to enable simple and intelligent disease management.
Under the leadership of Onduo’s newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Joshua Riff, the company will leverage Verily’s experience in miniaturized electronics, analytics, and consumer software development, and Sanofi’s clinical expertise and experience in bringing innovative treatments to people living with diabetes. Dr. Riff joins Onduo from Optum, the health services company of UnitedHealth Group, where he was senior vice president of prevention and wellbeing. Initially, Onduo will focus on the type 2 diabetes community, specifically on developing solutions that could help people make better decisions about their day to day health, ranging from improved medication management to improved habits and goals. Over time, the company plans to expand its focus to include the type 1 diabetes community, and eventually to people at risk of developing diabetes with the goal of helping them better prevent the onset of the disease.
AnchorOnduo is taking a multi-stakeholder approach to diabetes management by involving the diabetes community, clinicians, payers and healthcare professionals in the product development process. Sutter Health of Northern California and Allegheny Health Network of western Pennsylvania are among the first healthcare networks to collaborate with Verily and Onduo to test the Onduo platform with healthcare professionals and people with type 2 diabetes in a clinical care setting. Sutter Health’s not-for-profit network of physicians, hospitals, outpatient surgery and specialty centers and other healthcare services, including home health and hospice, medical research and education/training, cares for more than 3 million patients. .Allegheny Health Network is an academic healthcare system consisting of eight hospitals, outpatient surgery centers, health and wellness pavilions, a research institute and more than 1,100 employed physicians. Premier Medical Associates, part of Allegheny Health Network, is the largest multi-specialty physician practice in the Greater Pittsburgh area.
Additionally, Onduo is discussing with patient advocacy groups like Taking Control of Your Diabetes (TCOYD) to provide input on future product designs.
