By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Shares of health care firm DexCom traded at an all-time high Wednesday amid news it was partnering with Google to create an affordable diabetes sensor roughly the size of a bandage.
Google’s Life Sciences division, which is now an independent subsidiary in the recently formed Alphabet company, and DexCom are working on a wearable sensor that uploads patient information to the cloud.
Currently, most diabetes monitors require patients to draw blood from a finger in order to measure blood sugar levels. The monitor designed by DexCom and Google will be cheaper, less intrusive and disposable – and it will work for patients suffering from either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.
“This partnership has the potential to change the face of diabetes technology forever,” DexCom CEO Kevin Sayer said in a release. “Working together, we believe we can introduce products that will move us beyond our core Type 1 business to become the standard of care for all people living with diabetes.”
Stock of DexCom, based out of San Diego, hit $96.23 Wednesday, an amount more than double the $44 level it was trading a year ago. Google shares moved higher this week after it announced it was restructuring as a new company named Alphabet.
“We're committed to developing new technologies that will help move health care from reactive to proactive," according to Andrew Conrad, head of the life sciences team at Google, in a statement. “This collaboration is another step towards expanding monitoring options and making it easier for people with diabetes to proactively manage their health.”
With a burgeoning obesity epidemic in the United States and around the world, diabetes is a growing problem. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claimed 29 million American adults suffered from the affliction in 2014, about 3 million more than in 2010.
The International Diabetes Federation that is based in Belgium, claimed last year that 387 million patients were living with disease, with almost half of cases going undiagnosed. The World Health Organization projects that diabetes will be the seventh leading cause of death globally by 2030.
