What You Should Know
- The Partnership: Verily Life Sciences and Samsung Electronics America are collaborating to integrate the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 directly into Verily’s precision health platform, Pre.
- The Clinical Goal: The joint solution is designed to accelerate research for life sciences and government customers by allowing them to run real-world studies using continuous, consumer-grade wearable data.
- The Hardware: The Galaxy Watch 8 acts as a robust clinical tool, bringing FDA-cleared features like moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea assessment and irregular heart rhythm (AFib) notifications, alongside continuous SpO2 and body composition tracking.
- The Software Ecosystem: Verily will ingest this sensor data into its Viewpoint Evidence solution. Sponsors will utilize Verily’s Refinery tool to harmonize the data and its Workbench tool for AI/ML-driven analysis and modeling.
- The Sponsor Value: Research sponsors gain exclusive access to a longitudinal dataset of consented participants. This harmonizes Samsung sensor data with medical records, surveys, and third-party data at the individual level, solving one of the biggest data-silo issues in modern clinical trials.
Bridging Consumer Hardware and Clinical Software
Historically, the barrier to using consumer wearables in clinical trials hasn’t been the hardware; it has been the fragmented, messy backend data. Samsung has already done the heavy lifting on the hardware and regulatory front. The Galaxy Watch 8 features FDA clearance for moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea assessments and irregular heart rhythm notifications, providing clinical-grade guardrails for its biometric sensors.
Verily’s role is to make that data actually usable for life science companies. Through this partnership, Samsung’s sensor data will pipe directly into Verily’s Viewpoint Evidence solution. From there, research sponsors can use Verily’s AI/ML tools—specifically Refinery for data harmonization and Workbench for modeling—to make sense of the billions of data points being generated.
“The use of consumer-friendly devices in clinical research makes it easier for participants to engage in studies, while enabling sponsors to use advanced biomarkers to generate high quality data,” noted Scott Burke, Chief Technology Officer at Verily.
The Longitudinal Data Advantage
For pharmaceutical companies and government researchers, the true value of this partnership is the holistic patient view. Sponsors utilizing Verily’s platform gain access to a rich dataset of consented participants where continuous Samsung sensor data is harmonized directly with the patient’s Electronic Health Records (EHR), survey responses, and other third-party data.
