V is for Verily.
Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google, revealed a new name for the company’s Life Sciences division: Verily.
Alphabet made the branding announcement with a video and a company website that went live on Monday. In it, Verily laid out a multidisciplinary approach to health and longevity, describing disease as a “continuum” that will be fought with experts from different fields and divisions working on hardware such as medical devices, software that might use algorithms to look for health patterns, as well as clinical studies like the Baseline Study of health and disease.
“Imagine a chemist and an engineer and a doctor and a behavioral scientist, all working together to truly understand health and to better prevent, detect, and manage disease,” the company said on its website. “At Verily, that’s the world we want to create. Our multidisciplinary teams have access to advanced research tools, large scale computing power, and unique technical expertise.”
The new name for the business is part of Google’s transition to a holding company structure under the parent entity dubbed Alphabet. For those keeping track of Alphabet’s soup of operating companies, Verily is the division that was the Life Sciences unit of Google’s X lab. Life Sciences “graduated” from Google X shortly after Google announced the Alphabet structure.
The chief executive of Verily is Andy Conrad, a cell biologist. “Andy Conrad will continue to lead the team, reporting to a board made up of representatives from Alphabet and Verily,” said a Verily spokeswoman in an emailed statement.
Verily means “truth” or “truly” and the name, according to the spokeswoman, is meant to underscore the company’s mission to”reveal a true picture of health and disease.”
“We’re focused on chronic conditions that impact a large number of people: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and mental health,” she said.
Some ongoing projects include a contact lens that can detect its wearer’s blood-sugar level. It is being developed in partnership with Novartis. The announcement suggested that Verily will continue to favor that partnership approach.
“We work with partners from across the industry and many fields of research to develop new technology, launch studies, and start companies,” it said on its website.