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News > Projects Dynamic

Google Healthcare Spinoff Verily Could Be Profitable

Time:2016/04/16 Source:Medical Device Business

It seems there’s more trouble brewing in the Google family, and apparently, it’s right in the Nest. But there appears to be a bright spot in the universe of companies under the Alphabet umbrella, and it involves healthcare.


Around the same time that a report surfaced about employees leaving healthcare division Verily Life Sciences over unhappiness with its CEO, others appeared saying that a similar exodus had happened at Nest, Google’s home device company, over misery under its CEO.


Now, Re/Code is reporting that Google cofounder and Alphabet executive Sergey Brin told a come-all-ye meeting at Google that Verily is profitable and has a lower attrition rate than Google and Alphabet.


Some of Alphabet’s “other bets” aren’t turning a profit yet, Brin allowed, but Verily is “on a cash basis and increasingly so,” Re/Code reported.


Meanwhile, the details of Verily’s plans remain largely guarded from the public view. A couple of projects, however, have been announced. There’s the collaboration with Johnson & Johnson on surgical robotics (now known as Verb Surgical), the partnership with Novartis on smart contact lenses for monitoring diabetes, and a study called “Baseline” that plans on studying 10,000 people over five years to quantify what it means to be healthy. Determining that benchmark could then be used to help detect the early signs of cancer and heart disease.


Also, the company is working on two wristbands. One can detect levels of diagnostic nanoparticles while another is more of a continuous health monitor—gauging metrics such as skin temperature and pulse. Verily is also working with Novartis to develop a smart contact lens.


It is one of three units contributing to the Other Bets total revenue ($448 million) in 2015, along with Google Fiber and Nest, Re/Code notes.


The site estimated Verily’s sales at about $10 million, compared with $340 million for Nest and about $100 million for Fiber. During the year, the moonshots combined for a reported operating loss of $3.6 billion, it added.


A March report by Business Insider revealed that Verily had submitted to FDA photos and more information in its quest to land the federal government’s permission to use a “connectivity bridge” to collect patients’ medical data.


The odd-looking device, which resembles a Barbie bathtub, appears to be a wireless hub to collect data from sensors that patients use and transmit it for analysis to the cloud.


Google is already working with pharmaceutical maker Biogen Idec Inc. to use the technology to study outside factors that drive the progression of multiple sclerosis over time. Participants in the MS study at Brigham and Women’s hospital are using Google’s Study Kit apps, which collect health data from Android, iOS and other devices.


Google’s Study Kit competes with Apple’s Healthkit and Research Kit in wireless medical data transmission. If approved, the Connectivity Bridge would join an increasingly crowded field of companies seeking to track patient conditions wirelessly.