Verily will use the money to expand its commercial businesses and advance life sciences programs.

Verily, an Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) subsidiary, focuses on life sciences and healthcare. It announced Thursday a $ 700 million funding raised from its existing investors. These included parent company Alphabet, Silver Lake, Temasek, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and others. (Fierce Biotech)

Nearly two years ago, Verily raised $ 1 billion from the same external investors.

Use of funds

Verily said it will use the funding to expand its commercial businesses which include Baseline, a platform that enables enrolment of clinical study participants.

The Baseline platform was at the forefront of the Covid 19 testing and research drive. It tested and screened nearly 2 million people across 351 testing locations.

Other commercial ventures include the Verily Health Platforms group. Healthy at Work is an initiative that integrates COVID-19 testing, symptom screening, population analytics, and ongoing safety controls to help organizations operationalize their plans to return to work and campus.

Another venture of Verily Health is Onduo – which is has built a new digital healthcare model that uses advanced to help people manage their health. The Onduo app tracks health progress and patients’ activities in real-time through the use of novel sensing devices. It provides personal coaching as well as a virtual clinic that provides access to board-certified specialists.

Under Verily Health is the Coefficient unit which advises companies on how to better manage their self-funded health benefits. Using a novel recession risk approach, Coefficient can segment risk, reduce variability, and more accurately assess a client’s health cost exposure. It can therefore offer competitive one-year rates and a multi-year rate guarantee.  The unit is backed by Swiss Re, and the insurance it offers is a kind of “stop-loss open” insurance.

Verily also intends to use the financing to progress various life sciences programs in the surgery, pathology, and immunology fields.

Outlook

“2021 will be a year of significant and focused growth for Verily’s operations as we continue to drive innovation in our core programs, launching more studies and study tools on Baseline to support decentralized research, and expanding our Health Platforms product offerings and services for employers, providers, and patients,” said Andrew Conrad, CEO and founder at Verily.

“Verily has an impressive roster of platforms and a demonstrated ability to apply core capabilities in laboratory and data science, engineering, and clinical expertise to tackle the challenges of a healthcare system in need of an overhaul for the benefit of all the stakeholders it serves,” said Egon Durban, co-CEO at investor Silver Lake.

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