L'Oréal teams up with Alphabet-owned Verily to develop research programmes on “skin health”

On Thursday, global cosmetics giant L'Oréal announced a partnership with Verily, the health division of Alphabet, parent company of Google, to develop research programmes on “skin health.”

This partnership, “the first of its kind in the cosmetics industry” according to L'Oréal, is designed to generate “two programmes aimed at better understanding and deciphering the mechanisms of hair and skin ageing,” as L’Oréal indicated in a press release on Thursday.

The first of these programmes pools together L’Oréal’s scientific knowledge about skincare with Verily’s digital data expertise. The goal is to discover the links between skin ageing, deep skin biology and the whole set of environmental factors a person is exposed to throughout their life (knowns as the exposome in scientific language).

The second programme aims to develop a digital diagnostic service for healthcare professionals, as L’Oréal indicated. L’Oréal and Verily will rely on “the development of new technologies and tele-diagnosis solutions, such as sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms applied to dermatology and skin care.”

“Thanks to this partnership, we want to lead a new era of skin health, through tech and science, to enable every person around the world to enjoy the most inclusive, personalized, powerful and precise programs for their skin at each stage of their lives,” said Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of the L’Oréal group, cited in the press release.

Nowadays, 1.9 billion people worldwide suffer from skin disorders (eczema, psoriasis, skin cancer, acne and more), and sometimes it is very difficult for them to have access to dermatologists, said L’Oréal.

“Verily and L’Oréal believe in the transformative power of technology to enable precision beauty and health” said Stephen Gillett, president and COO of Verily.

“Our collective approach has the potential to identify the right intervention based on data, powered by Verily's technology and clinical science abilities combined with L’Oréal’s beauty industry-leading intelligence and dermatology network,” said Brian Otis, co-founder of Verily, also cited in the press release.