Novo Nordisk and Glooko unveil first comarketed app for diabetes solutions

The first product from Novo Nordisk’s partnership with diabetes health tech startup Glooko has arrived.

It’s an app called Cornerstones4Care Powered by Glooko, or the C4C app for short, and it allows people with diabetes to measure and track blood glucose, activities and meals.

The app combines Novo Nordisk’s content and resources from its existing C4C online program and Glooko’s technology to sync blood glucose and activity data from almost any available diabetes or exercise device.

David Moore, senior VP of marketing at Novo Nordisk, said the app is customizable, user friendly and reinforces the positive aspects of managing diabetes. The idea with this first app is to learn from it, as well as adapt and improve the specific C4C app, and work to create more digital offerings that can improve outcomes for patients. That also means taking lessons learned in diabetes digital health tech and applying them to other Novo treatment areas, such as obesity and weight management, and in rare diseases, where the company's focus is on growth disease disorders and hemophilia, he said.

The app is available free for registered C4C online users and can be downloaded from the Apple or Google app stores. It will not be packaged with any Novo Nordisk products, but it will be marketed along with the Danish drugmaker's C4C program through digital and social channels as well as traditional media.

Novo Nordisk is the world’s largest insulin producer and markets treatments including long-acting insulin Tresiba and combination drug Ryzodeg.

When asked why Novo Nordisk didn’t just take its content and diabetes knowledge and build out its own technology platform, Moore said, “Our core competence is bringing forward innovative treatments for patients with diabetes. It’s not our expertise to develop digital health solutions. Our intent there is to work with people we believe are leaders and are innovative in this space and make sure that we’re able to provide a comprehensive solution. Digital health is not something we are focused on developing, it’s something we’re focused on being a part of.”

Novo Nordisk also has an agreement with IBM’s Watson Health artificial intelligence computing platform to build out its digital health platform.

Moore said Novo Nordisk is in “explore mode” when it comes to digital health. The company’s aim is not to establish just one tactic or excel on one platform, but rather take a more holistic approach.

Inside Novo, he said, “we have a specific, purposeful focus and plan on this and a group in our organization to explore these opportunities. We want to focus on quality and what that potential outcome can be to make sure we make purposeful choices.”