Two former Verily executives say that they are starting a new initiative, Highlander Health, to push forward an effort decades in the making: making it so that the records collected in hospitals can be used in real-time to advance science, decreasing the cost of conducting clinical trials and speeding medical progress while helping patients get the right drug for them.
It is an effort that has spanned multiple organizations and companies, but that they now say will best be fostered by their independence.
One of them is Amy Abernethy, who before joining Verily was the No. 2 official at the Food and Drug Administration, an executive at health data firm Flatiron Health, and an oncology researcher at Duke University. The other is Brad Hirsch, who worked for Abernethy at Duke and Flatiron and whose last company, SignalPath, focused on clinical trials technology, was acquired by Verily in 2021.
