Walgreens Addresses Health Care Costs, Partners With Verily

Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc and Verily, an Alphabet company, have announced they will collaborate on multiple projects in a new partnership. Under a broad agreement, the companies will work to improve health outcomes for patients with chronic conditions while lowering the cost of care.

“We are well aligned with Walgreens on the need to develop and bring to market solutions that help people better engage with their health and manage their chronic conditions. This relationship affords us the opportunity to jointly tackle real-world issues that significantly impact the health of individuals and communities,” said Andrew Conrad, chief executive officer at Verily. “Medication adherence, which represents one of the most significant and costly barriers to improving patient outcomes, is an area that I am most excited to work on with a partner like Walgreens.”

The two companies will initially develop a medication adherence pilot program that will deploy devices and other approaches designed to improve adherence. Further, Walgreenstogether with Onduo, which is Verily’s joint venture with Sanofi—will also launch a virtual diabetes solution to Walgreens employees and family members with type 2 diabetes through the Walgreens employee health plan. Onduo allows patients with diabetes access to tools, coaching, as well as remote access to specialty doctors.

According to a company press release, the initiatives of the collaboration are part of a broader strategic alliance that is designed to combine Verily’s health care technology innovation with Walgreens corner store presence and trusted pharmacy services.

“We’re focused on finding innovative ways to deliver better patient care at lower costs, and working with the right health care partners to help bring new services and solutions to our patients and customers,” said Stefano Pessina, chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. “The continued rise in chronic diseases today can be costly to patients as well as to our health care system. Working with Verily, we’ll look at how we can best support integrated and value-based care to meet our patients’ needs, as well as opportunities to address other chronic conditions over time.”— Julie Gould