After years spent building a seemingly slapdash set of medical initiatives, Verily seems to have a game plan.
The Alphabet life sciences spinout is doubling down on the business of evidence generation, trying to build the tools and technical infrastructure that will help pharma and digital health customers run the next generation of clinical trials. It’s an area that Verily and its investors — who just poured $1 billion into the company — are predicting can become a lucrative line of business. And Verily is backing up that bet by filling its ranks with some of the Food and Drug Administration’s top scientific, policy, and legal experts.
The revolving door between Verily and the FDA is beginning to spin at a strategic time for Verily’s business. Regulators are only beginning to grapple with the controversial idea of using data gathered outside traditional clinical trials — organized into so-called real-world evidence — to make decisions about drugs and medical devices. But even as policies are in flux, it’s clear the agency is interested. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf — who led health policy and strategy for Verily and Google Health in between his first and second stint at the helm of the agency — has said that collaborating with the industry to create a better evidence generation system is a “major priority.”
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