While Google is rumored to be prepping up to two new in-house made Android Wear smartwatches — which may or may not be featured in next week’s event — a spinoff of Alphabet‘s former Google X named Verily is still actively working on its health-tracking watch (via MIT Technology Review), which is slowly advancing towards being a finished product…
It doesn’t seem that long ago when putting tiny machines into people’s bodies to cure or manage diseases was the stuff of science-fiction, but bioelectronics is a real – if very new – field of medicine. Alphabet’s Verily Life Sciences (formerly Google Life Sciences) and pharma company GSK are teaming up to invest $715M in the tech over the next seven years.
Bioelectronic medicine is a relatively new scientific field that aims to tackle a wide range of chronic diseases using miniaturised, implantable devices that can modify electrical signals that pass along nerves in the body, including irregular or altered impulses that occur in many illnesses. GSK has been active in this field since 2012 and believes certain chronic conditions such as arthritis, diabetes and asthma could potentially be treated using these devices …
The goal of last year’s Alphabet re-org was to effectively turn Google’s many research divisions into startups that make profitable products and services. To better incentivize executives and employees, a new report (via Bloomberg) says that Alphabet is implementing a new type of stock compensation whose value is tied to the performance of each company.
There has been quite a bit of press surrounding the behind-the-scenes aspect of Alphabet companies over recent weeks, mainly centered around Nest and Tony Fadell. Earlier today, it was reported that Fadell appeared at Google’s all-hands meeting two-weeks ago to address the stream of negative press. In addition to Fadell defending Nest, Re/code now reports that executive Sergey Brin also defended the company’s life science unit, Verily, at the meeting.
According to a recent FCC filling, Alphabet’s Life Sciences wing Verily has recently developed a new “Connectivity Bridge” for use in clinical studies. The device is capable of collecting and syncing medical information of people participating in clinical studies, allowing Google to continue to improve its efforts in healthcare.
Now that the Alphabet restructuring is kicking into gear, the company today has renamed its experimental health care branch. The branch was originally named Google Life Sciences, but from here on out will be known as “Verily.” The goals of Verily are identical to Life Sciences and the only thing that’s really changing is the name.
