Verily Life Sciences, Alphabet's health research arm and sister company to Google Health, announced it'spartnering with genetics and health technology firm Color to supply participants of Verily's Project Baseline research platform with genetic information. Business Insider Intelligence

Project Baseline began in 2017 with goals of making clinical research more accessible to participants and arriving at a quantifiable "baseline" for good health. The research project has since launched several clinical research projects in partnership with some of the largest names in healthcare, including: Pfizer, Mayo Clinic, Novartis, the American Heart Association, and Stanford Medicine.

The partnership could enable Verily to incorporate data on genetic risk factors into its various clinical studies, leading to a more in-depth and holistic understanding of health.It's unclear exactly how information gleaned from Color's genetic tests will be leveraged in Project Baseline studies, but it's possible that future research initiatives may choose to examine how genetic risk factors affect health outcomes alongside patients' behavior and medical history.

And allowing Project Baseline members access to genetic testing and personalized health advice may improve participant engagement with the particular research program they're involved in and with the Project Baseline platform overall, which is critical given that86%of clinical trials fail to hit their participation goals.

We caught up with Color CEO Othman Laraki to discuss how a Verily-Color tie up furthers Color's goals for a genetic future of healthcare below are some key takeaways from our conversation:

We think Color will benefit from the exposure that comes when partnering with a Google-affiliated business, and more users should facilitate stronger population health insights.In the last two months, Color has scored massive partnerships with NIH and its All of Us program and now Verily: two major names in healthcare. And each new project raises not just Color's profile, but that of the genetic testing field as a whole, according to Laraki.

Laraki pointed out that the idea of every home having a personal computer was once considered crazy and that one day it may be the case that genetic data is as commonplace in healthcare as computers are in the home. But this might only be possible if far-reaching research programs like All of Us and Project Baseline can successfully attract participants and deliver actionable results.

Color has become a standout player in genetic testing by focusing on large-scale population health projects which I (Zach) think is a smart business model in the face of apotential slowdownin the direct-to-consumer genetic testing market."In some ways, using a doctor's time to measure your height and have them listen to your heartbeat is almost more expensive now than getting a complete genomic profile," says Laraki.

And the fact that genetic testing is becoming cheaper for consumers could be part of why we're seeing so much interest from providers and research firms in population-level genetic health research: MIT Technology Review now estimates that over100 millionpeople globally will have taken an at-home genetic test by 2021, up from the 26 million consumers at the beginning of 2019, for example.

With industry leaders like Illumina expressing concerns around a potential slowdown for the direct-to-consumer genetic testing market, a model that's given rise to 23andMe and Ancestry the two biggest names in genetic testing today I think that Color's model will conversely gain traction as providers are increasingly becominginterestedin moving beyond individual patient results and searching for the root cause of conditions affecting their communities.

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Alphabet-backed Verily partners with Color to bring genetic insights to its research - Business Insider Nordic

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