Sanofi, Google link up for new healthcare innovation lab

Sanofi and Google have announced a joint virtual Innovation Lab, with the aim to "radically transform how future medicines and health services are delivered by tapping into the power of emerging data technologies."

The collaboration will leverage deep analytics across data sets to better understand key diseases and extract related patient insights, enabling Sanofi to research and develop more personalised approaches to treatment and identify accompanying technologies to improve health outcomes.

Sanofi’s chief digital officer, Ameet Nathwani, said that the company will "stand on the forefront of a new age for biology and human health, with the opportunity to transform healthcare through partnerships with pioneering technology and analytics companies."

He continued, "Combining Sanofi’s biologic innovations and scientific data with Google’s industry-leading capabilities, from cloud computing to state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, we aspire to give people more control over their health and accelerate the discovery of new therapies."

The companies also plan to apply artificial intelligence (AI) across diverse datasets to better forecast sales and inform marketing and supply chain efforts. Using AI will take into account real-time information as well as geographic, logistic and manufacturing constraints to help the accuracy of these complex activities.

The ultimate aim of the collaboration is to "change how Sanofi develops new treatments and will focus on three key objectives": to better understand patients and diseases, to increase Sanofi’s operational efficiency, and to improve the experience of Sanofi’s patients and customers.

To coincide with the lab, Sanofi IT will be modernising its infrastructure by migrating some existing business applications to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).