Sanofi, Google team up in search of new treatments, marketing solutions

A few months ago, Sanofi tapped its chief medical officer Ameet Nathwani, M.D., to spearhead a digital revolution at the company. And he’s bringing in the big guns to help. The French drugmaker has joined forces with Google to create a new virtual innovation lab, where the partners will marry Google’s technology and analytics expertise with Sanofi’s data to bring deeper understanding of diseases and patients’ experience, they said Tuesday. The lab will work on both the scientific and commercial sides in search of both more personalized approaches to treatment and digital technologies that can help improve outcomes. “We aspire to give people more control over their health and accelerate the discovery of new therapies,” Nathwani said in a statement. And that’s not all. Sanofi will also use Google’s digital prowess to improve its own operations and infrastructure. For one, the pair will deploy artificial intelligence to help forecast sales and optimize marketing and supply chain activities. “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 companies said. Sanofi will also be moving some of its existing business to the Google Cloud platform, a transition it says will cut costs.