Can the glob­al­ly in­flu­en­tial Google rev­o­lu­tion­ize the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar clin­i­cal tri­al busi­ness?

Some of the biggest phar­mas out there think so, look­ing to Google’s sis­ter out­fit Ver­i­ly — op­er­at­ing un­der Al­pha­bet, the par­ent com­pa­ny — to guide the in­dus­try in­to the dig­i­tal age with its ex­tra­or­di­nary reach in­to the lives of bil­lions of peo­ple on the plan­et.

This morn­ing, No­var­tis, Pfiz­er, Sanofi and Ot­su­ka all lined up to jump on the Pro­ject Base­line plat­form at the Google-re­lat­ed life sci­ences di­vi­sion, look­ing to em­ploy the dig­i­tal Go­liath’s tech ser­vices in re­cruit­ing pa­tients and or­ga­niz­ing the mass of da­ta com­ing out of the glob­al tri­al sys­tem.

Build­ing on Base­line’s ini­tial plans to an­a­lyze da­ta on 10,000 vol­un­teers, the Google op­er­a­tion is now look­ing to steer peo­ple to drug stud­ies as they search for more in­for­ma­tion on the dis­eases that plague them. That can ex­tend Big Phar­ma’s reach — and in­flu­ence — in­to mil­lions of house­holds.

Just how big is that reach? One re­cent as­sess­ment con­clud­ed that Google con­trols 90% of the search en­gine mar­ket, with 63,000 search­es per sec­ond, while the av­er­age per­son makes 3 to 4 search­es per day. And health­care is one of their biggest sin­gle fo­cus­es.

Jes­si­ca Mega

This ini­tia­tive is hap­pen­ing at a time the FDA has been en­cour­ag­ing a fresh look at the way tri­als are de­signed and ex­e­cut­ed, look­ing to short­en the de­vel­op­ment path for the most promis­ing ther­a­pies — or trig­ger­ing a fast ex­e­cu­tion of the weak­est drug can­di­dates. 

For all the talk about change, though, the de­vel­op­ment path­way for new drugs has large­ly stuck with a tra­di­tion­al gold stan­dard in use for years. Ver­i­ly will see if it can steer a new di­rec­tion, and that has the po­ten­tial to make for some dra­mat­ic changes in the CRO world.

“No­var­tis, Ot­su­ka, Pfiz­er and Sanofi have been ear­ly adopters of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal tools to im­prove clin­i­cal re­search op­er­a­tions, and to­geth­er we’re tak­ing an­oth­er step to­wards mak­ing re­search ac­ces­si­ble and gen­er­at­ing ev­i­dence to in­form bet­ter treat­ments and care,” not­ed Ver­i­ly CMO Jes­si­ca Mega in a pre­pared state­ment.

Im­age Source: Sipa USA via AP

During BIO this year, I had a chance to moderate a panel among some of the top tech experts in biopharma on their real-world use of artificial intelligence in R&D. There’s been a lot said about the potential of AI, but I wanted to explore more about what some of the larger players are actually doing with this technology today, and how they see it advancing in the future. It was a fascinating exchange, which you can see here. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. — John Carroll

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