Sanofi teams up with Verily to create diabetes JV

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi SA and Alphabet-owned Verily Life Sciences LLC are investing 0 million in a joint venture that will address the global diabetes epidemic.

The Cambridge, Mass. -based Onduo JV will aim to combine Verily’s expertise in miniaturized electronics, analytics, and consumer software with Sanofi’s diabetes program.

Initially, Onduo will work on type 2 diabetes, helping patients make informed decisions about their health, whether that’s managing their medication or suggesting ways to improve their overall quality of life. But eventually the focus will extend to the type I diabetes community, and people at risk of developing the condition. Sutter Health of Northern California and Allegheny Health Network of western Pennsylvania will collaborate with Verily and Onduo to test the platform in a clinical care setting, and Onduo is also looking to patient advocacy groups like Taking Control of Your Diabetes for insight.

The new company will be based in the USA town of Cambridge, near Boston, the epicentre of the global biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industries, where Sanofi already has a presence.

“With more market entrants and as the space gets more crowded, it will be more hard to maintain your stance from a contracting and commercial standpoint”.

Verily is a company that comes under Alphabet (Google’s parent corporation), and the partnership with Sanofi is one of several ventures between Verily and the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors.

Sanofi and Google have been working together on digital health tools for type 1 and type 2 diabetes for around a year, and the formation of Onduo takes their collaboration to a higher level.

Guenter added that the joint venture would adopt a “more service-centric approach and support doctors in treating their patients effectively”. We’re not jumping to solutions because we’re in a rush to get to market.

“As we start to identify those, the thing that’s really nice is we’ll be able able in parallel to start creating those tools”, Dr. Jessica Mega, chief medical officer at Verily told Business Insider. “In addition to developing innovative therapies for diabetes which will remain a key focus for Sanofi, we see these solutions which combine innovative therapies and services as the future for diabetes care”.