The company wants to use that same approach to “uncover new truths about health and disease”, gain a better understanding about these ailments, and intervene more precisely. Yet, the new name may mean that customers can trust Verily team and their research, if Google delivers its promises. “Picture a world in which technology and life sciences are not distinct, but partners with a united mission”. The goals of Verily are identical to Life Sciences and the only thing that’s really changing is the name. Google[x]’s aim was a non-intrusive way for diabetics to check their blood sugar, as opposed to having to repeatedly take blood samples.
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With such bold aspirations to begin to “defeat Mother Nature” Alphabet, through Verily, has a grand challenge ahead of them, this new company has split their strategies to achieve this into four domains of hardware, software, clinical and science.
Another project is seemingly built around a modular smartwatch.
He said Verily’s focus is a shift from conventional medical technologies, “from reactive to proactive, from intervention to prevention”.
A chemist, an engineer, a doctor, and a behavioral scientist walk into a lab. That’s not the intro to a joke, but to Verily-formerly Google Life Sciences-a serious, interdisciplinary effort to use data to better identify signs of health and disease.
The renaming of Google Life to Verily follows a radical restructuring of Google in October when it became a subsidiary of a new entity called Alphabet, while at the same time getting itself a new CEO. Dr. Jessica Mega, who came over from Harvard Medical in May to head up the Baseline Study, will serve as Chief Medical Officer.
For all of Verily’s grand ambitions, Conrad hinted at caution, if not humility, paraphrasing Clarence Darrow, the great lawyer and civil libertarian: “We don’t claim to know what other ignorant men are sure of”.
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Areas of focus include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and mental health.
