PARIS and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE,
Mass., Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Sanofi and Verily Life Sciences LLC, (formerly Google Life
Sciences), an Alphabet company, today 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, M.D., M.B.A.,
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.
"My experience as a physician and in leading consumer health
initiatives has shown me the daily burden of living with
diabetes," said Dr. Riff, CEO, Onduo. "From monitoring food
intake to testing glucose levels to actively seeking medical care,
the challenges both on the physical and mental well-being of a
person living with diabetes are incredibly difficult. We want to
develop solutions that allow people living with diabetes to focus
on the things they love and enjoy in life by providing tools to
make dealing with their diabetes less burdensome."
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.
"The integration of multiple interventions, such as
data-driven patient support and devices in addition to treatment,
can help improve outcomes, which is important from the perspective
of patients, healthcare professionals and the overall healthcare
system," said Peter
Guenter, Executive Vice President, Head, Global Diabetes
& Cardiovascular Business Unit, Sanofi. "The new company
Sanofi and Verily invested in will adopt a more service-centric
approach and support doctors in their efforts to treat their
patients more effectively. 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. We believe this will help
societies cope with the burden of this epidemic."
Joining Forces with Experts and Advocates
Onduo 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.
"This is an innovative collaboration that spans the
healthcare continuum and benefits from deep and cross-functional
expertise, giving us unique potential to create tools and solutions
that could have a positive clinical effect," said Jessica Mega, M.D., M.P.H., chief medical
officer of Verily. "Our goal is to connect the dots for
healthcare providers on the 'moments of truth' that happen outside
of the clinical setting, and to help people manage diabetes on a
daily basis. Our collaborations with health networks like
Sutter Health and Allegheny Health will help bring that vision to
life."
Additionally, Onduo is discussing with patient advocacy groups
like Taking Control of Your Diabetes (TCOYD) to provide input on
future product designs.
"With Onduo, Sanofi and Verily are bringing forward a
platform that is novel and critical in diabetes management,"
said Steven V. Edelman, M.D.,
Founder and Director, TCOYD. "Onduo is a company focused on the
improvement of health outcomes through the marriage of technology
and medicine. Its information-based solutions align well with
TCOYD's mission to empower people with diabetes and their loved
ones to effectively and easily take control of diabetes. We welcome
and support Onduo's efforts and look forward to their
progress."
Joshua Riff, M.D., M.B.A.
Named CEO
Dr. Riff is an emergency medicine physician by
training. He was most recently the senior vice president of
prevention and well-being at Optum, the service arm of United
Healthcare. Prior to that, Dr. Riff served as medical director at
Target, where he ran the health plan for Target team members and
provided medical oversight to their clinics and pharmacies. He
completed his M.D. and M.B.A. at Tufts
University in conjunction with Brandeis
University in Boston, Mass.
After medical school he completed his residency in Emergency
Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
About Diabetes
Diabetes is a chronic disease
characterized by elevated blood sugar due to inefficient or
deficient insulin production. In 2014 it was estimated that
globally, 422 million people suffer from the disease.[1]
Diabetes can be classified in two major subsets, type 1 and type 2.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that occurs when the
pancreas stops making insulin and therefore must be regulated via
daily administration of insulin. Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic
disorder in which a person's body produces insulin, but is not able
to regulate it efficiently. Over time, the disease can result in
serious or life threatening complications, including damage to the
heart, eyes, kidneys and nerves.[2] Research suggests
that the recommended self-care regimen for people with type 2
diabetes on oral medications requires at least two hours
daily.[3] It has been estimated that the global economic
burden of diabetes is U.S. $827
billion.[4]
About Verily Life Sciences
Verily is a life sciences
research and engineering organization focused on improving
healthcare outcomes by applying the latest scientific and
technological advances to significant problems in health and
biology. By combining unparalleled capabilities in data
organization and analytics services with robust scientific and
product engineering expertise, Verily is targeting the dual
objectives of creating tools and user-friendly platforms that
capture a deeper and broader set of health data, and organizing the
data so that it is useful and actionable. Verily partners with
leading life sciences, medical device, and government organizations
to leverage deep domain expertise and resources that enable
exponentially faster development, meaningful advancements, and
deployment at scale.
About Sanofi
Sanofi, a global healthcare leader,
discovers, develops and distributes therapeutic solutions focused
on patients' needs. Sanofi is organized into five global business
units: Diabetes and Cardiovascular, General Medicines and Emerging
Markets, Sanofi Genzyme, Sanofi Pasteur and Merial. Sanofi is
listed in Paris (EURONEXT: SAN)
and in New York (NYSE: SNY).
Sanofi Forward-Looking Statements
This press
release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended.
Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical
facts. These statements include projections and estimates and their
underlying assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives,
intentions and expectations with respect to future financial
results, events, operations, services, product development and
potential, and statements regarding future performance.
Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words
"expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates",
"plans" and similar expressions. Although Sanofi's management
believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking
statements are reasonable, investors are cautioned that
forward-looking information and statements are subject to various
risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and
generally beyond the control of Sanofi, that could cause actual
results and developments to differ materially from those expressed
in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and
statements. These risks and uncertainties include among other
things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development,
future clinical data and analysis, including post marketing,
decisions by regulatory authorities, such as the FDA or the EMA,
regarding whether and when to approve any drug, device or
biological application that may be filed for any such product
candidates as well as their decisions regarding labelling and other
matters that could affect the availability or commercial potential
of such product candidates, the absence of guarantee that the
product candidates if approved will be commercially successful, the
future approval and commercial success of therapeutic alternatives,
Sanofi's ability to benefit from external growth opportunities
and/or obtain regulatory clearances, risks associated with
intellectual property and any related pending or future litigation
and the ultimate outcome of such litigation, trends in
exchange rates and prevailing interest rates, volatile economic
conditions, the impact of cost containment initiatives and
subsequent changes thereto, the average number of shares
outstanding as well as those discussed or identified in the public
filings with the SEC and the AMF made by Sanofi, including those
listed under "Risk Factors" and "Cautionary Statement Regarding
Forward-Looking Statements" in Sanofi's annual report on Form 20-F
for the year ended December 31, 2015.
Other than as required by applicable law, Sanofi does not undertake
any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information
or statements.
[1] Roglic, G. (2016). Global report on diabetes.
Retrieved August 08, 2016, from
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/204871/1/9789241565257_eng.pdf?ua=1
[2] National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2014. (2014).
Retrieved August 8, 2016, from
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/statsreport14/national-diabetes-report-web.pdf
[3] Russell, L. B.,
Suh, D. C., & Safford, M. A. (2005). Time requirements for
diabetes self-management: too much for many. J Fam Pract, 54(1),
52-56.
[4] NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Worldwide
trends in diabetes since 1980: a pooled analysis of 751
population-based studies with 4*4 million participants. Lancet
2016; published online April 7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00618-8.
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sanofi-and-verily-life-sciences-announce-launch-of-onduo-a-joint-venture-to-develop-comprehensive-diabetes-management-platform-300326057.html
SOURCE Sanofi