Onduo, a new startup with a whopping half billion dollars in funding from Verily (the life sciences division launched by Google's parent, Alphabet) and French drug company Sanofi, has chosen Cambridge for its headquarters.
Led by Dr. Joshua Riff, a Tufts Medical School graduate and former emergency room doctor, Onduo aims to fight diabetes using a combination of software and clinical data on a comprehensive diabetes management platform. For now, the startup will be based out of the Cambridge Innovation Center at the heart of local tech hub Kendall Square.
Riff told the Boston Business Journal that Onduo will “remove the friction” from the lives of some 400 million people living with diabetes worldwide by giving them better insight into their disease. Onduo’s tools will focus on predictive analytics, helping patients by anticipating certain times of the week that they would be likely to have higher or lower glucose levels.
According to a statement from Sanofi, Riff joins Onduo from Optum, the health services company of UnitedHealth Group, where he was senior vice president of prevention and well-being.
Though the company remains tight-lipped on many details, Riff said that Onduo could feature a search engine similar to Google’s but specifically geared toward answering questions from diabetes patients.
Riff also didn’t mention how many employees Onduo aims to hire, but suggested he would aim to hire people from nontraditional backgrounds — behavioral scientists and diabetic specialists, for example.
In the beginning, Onduo will focus on the Type 2 diabetes community, developing solutions that could help people make better decisions about their day-to-day health that range from improved medication management to finding better habits and goals.
Eventually, the company plans to expand its focus to include the Type 1 diabetes community and later will focus on people at risk of developing diabetes — with the goal of helping them better prevent the onset of the disease.
While Sanofi committed about $248 million, Verily provided roughly equivalent capital to the venture.
Dr. Jessica Mega, the chief medical officer of Verily, said in a statement that the innovative collaboration spans the healthcare continuum, giving Onduo cross-functional expertise many startups lack.
“Our goal is to connect the dots for health care providers on the ‘moments of truth’ that happen outside of the clinical setting, and to help people manage diabetes on a daily basis,” Mega said.
Riff added that his experience as a physician has enlightened him to the many burdens of living with diabetes.
“From monitoring food intake to testing glucose levels to actively seeking medical care, the challenges both on the physical and mental well-being of a person living with diabetes are incredibly difficult,” Riff said. “We want to develop solutions that allow people living with diabetes to focus on the things they love and enjoy in life by providing tools to make dealing with their diabetes less burdensome.”
Photo courtesy of Facebook.
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