Big Pharma partners with tech co. to transform clinical trials
A group of major pharma companies have teamed up with Verily Life Sciences to overhaul how patients sign up for and engage with clinical trials.
Companies including Sanofi, Novartis, Pfizer and Otsuka have all formed a strategic alliance with Verily, formerly a division of Google X, which is focused on bringing more data analysis and technological innovations to healthcare.
According to the companies, the clinical trials process hasn’t improved much since the 60s, and still presents a time-intensive and financially draining part of the drug development process. One of Verily’s first goals will be to address patient recruitment by creating Google ads for potential patients searching the internet with health-related questions. They also plan to streamline the enrollment process into a 15 minute questionnaire, and incentivize the clinical trials process by providing some patients with data-driven feedback about their health.
Analysts have estimated that the clinical trials market is ripe for disruption and could be worth about $69 billion by 2026.
