Alphabet's Verily is expanding its ambitions in precision health by teaming up with L'Oreal on a multiyear research project to collect data from thousands of women about their skin and hair health.
The two companies announced a multiyear partnership and research collaboration in January 2022 to study skin health and develop new digital tools in the dermatology space.
Now, the health tech company is working with the cosmetics giant on what the two companies call the world's largest and most diverse skin and hair health study. The My Skin & Hair Journey longitudinal registry will enroll thousands of self-identifying U.S. women to collect data on the role of lifestyle, environment, wellness and personal beauty routines.
The goal of the study is to gather both qualitative and quantitative insights and make that information accessible and actionable for researchers and consumers. The study is part of Verily's Project Baseline program.
As part of the registry, L’Oreal and Verily will also launch an in-person study focused on advancing skin and hair health for black and African American skin tones.
Partnering with L'Oreal on this large study helps Verily build on its ambitions in the precision health space.
Verily says its goal is to use its technological capabilities combined with data to advance precision health across clinical research and care delivery including chronic condition management and value-based care initiatives.
"This partnership drives forward what we care about at Verily, which is precision health and personalization. It drives forward our core focus on longitudinal data, meeting patients as real people where they are and understanding how their health changes across time, what's scientifically driving it and also what's driving it with respect to your daily personal beauty ritual, like climate, environment, sleep, all these questions that then ultimately start to provide the signals that help to design better, personalized routines for the future," said Amy Abernethy, M.D., president of Verily’s clinical research business, in an interview with Fierce Healthcare.
As part of the longitudinal study, the two companies will be recruiting self-identifying women aged 18 to 70 from various ethnicities, social backgrounds and with diverse skin and hair attributes who will share self-reported data and surveys. A subgroup of participants will also participate in testing to uncover biomarkers that can lead to early detection or prevention of skin disorders, before they take hold, the companies said.
Verily has been focused on building longitudinal data sets as it sees opportunities to leverage data for clinical care and research. The company will bring these technology capabilities to bear through this partnership, Abernethy said.
"These are data sets that follow people across time and describe all aspects of their health, and in this particular case, skin and hair health. From the Verily perspective, we're bringing to the table our focus on user experience and ease of participation. Being able to meet people where they are and interact remotely," she said.
The company will be able to support in-person data collection, she noted.
The study will last at least 18 months and participants will leverage smartphones, tablets or computers with internet access and a camera to complete study activities at home. Participants will answer questions every two months about medical history, skin and hair, cosmetic routine, lifestyle and environmental factors. They will also snap a couple of "selfies" to help the research team learn about skin over time.
Barbara Lavernos, deputy CEO in charge of research, innovation and technology at L'Oréal, said it marks the first time a study of this magnitude has been designed for and launched in the beauty industry.
"Our work will go beyond skin to understand the many complex factors that may contribute to how beauty evolves over time. This study has the potential to unlock the mysteries of skin and hair health down to the individual level. In the future, it can serve as the cornerstone for developing precision beauty innovations for hair and skin, with a level of personalization never before seen," she said.
Abernethy jumped on board at Verily in June 2021 from the Food and Drug Administration, where she served as principal deputy commissioner and acting chief information officer. Abernethy oversees Verily's existing clinical research efforts—including its Project Baseline initiative to build health data management and analysis tools—and leads the development of a platform for clinical trials and real-world evidence studies.
She acknowledges that, on the surface, Verily working with a cosmetics, beauty and personal care products company seems like a surprising and unique collaboration.
"At first, we were a bit surprised that we were having conversations with L'Oreal around precision beauty and then as we had more and more of these conversations we became progressively more intrigued about the possibilities around precision and personalization, as that can really run the gamut between how that happens for people with cancer or diabetes, or how you think about that personalization in beauty routines," Abernethy said.
Moving forward, Verily is focused on a broad set of different partnerships to advance its precision health goals, Abernethy said. "We're focused on this idea of building a data and technology bridge between research and care that then show up in longitudinal, high-quality, multimodal datasets that start to tell more and more of the 360-degree view of health," she said.
She pointed to Verily's partnership with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation to build a longitudinal registry to accelerate research in Crohn’s disease and in ulcerative colitis, collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease.
RELATED
Verily narrows its focus, cutting device work and laying off 15% of staff
"We have new registries coming out over the next several months in other therapeutic areas," she noted. "As you start to see these data sets come forward from Verily and our partners, you're also going to see us working together with our partners to demonstrate how they get put to use whether that is to better understand the science and describe the overall natural history of a clinical and medical health-related or consumer-related situation, or how to use these data to ultimately start to understand how different products perform."
In January, Alphabet's life sciences subsidiary laid off about 15% of its staff as part of a restructuring to slim down its portfolio of disparate health projects. Gillett said in a blog post that Verily would no longer pursue multiple lines of business, including the development of medical devices, and will instead operate as “one centralized product organization” aimed at enabling precision healthcare.
Since being launched out of Google’s company incubator X in 2015, Verily’s varying list of enterprises has grown and shrank over the years—with some bought, some sold and others abandoned.
Through its recent partnership with L'Oreal, Verily helped the company develop a handheld computerized makeup applicator for people with limited hand and arm mobility. Called HAPTA, the device gives users the ability to steadily apply lipstick at home. HAPTA incorporated technology originally created by Verily to stabilize and level utensils to give people with limited hand and arm mobility the ability to eat with confidence and independence.
"Almost a decade ago, teams at Verily developed firmware for people with mobility disorders, so people who've had genetic disorders from birth that have led to mobility problems or Parkinson's disease or post-stroke syndrome. It combined sensors and many different artificial intelligence programs to stabilize utensils and get it to users' mouths," Abernethy said.
"L'Oreal then took that technology and together we updated it to be able to help people who have these different mobility disorders to be able to put on their makeup," she said. "This commitment from L'Oreal is essentially not only focusing on diversity of skin types, but diversity of personal experiences, including mobility. It's a pretty remarkable program."