Discover Dr. Sarah Thompson’s passion for innovating and humanizing chronic care

Verily Lightpath^* is a next-generation care solution that leverages technology and AI to deliver highly-personalized care at scale with a singular mission: helping more people with chronic conditions lead healthier lives. But it’s the passion, expertise and experience of Verily’s healthcare leaders and clinicians that bring humanity to care programs and personal connections with members. 

“From a young age I knew that I was interested in being of service to others. My parents instilled this in me, and it’s still my north star,” says Dr. Sarah Thompson, Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD), MBA. Sarah infuses empathy into her work everyday as a Verily clinician, healthcare innovator and leader.

Early on, Sarah hoped for a career that could impact care on a broad scale. She attended the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, and later Cornell, where she earned an MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership. First, her pharmaceutical fellowship provided invaluable experience in clinical trial operations, followed by time in an ambulatory pharmacy care setting. “Honestly, I landed there by accident. But it ended up being the best, and the start of focus on supporting population health. You could say I fell in love with improving population health,” Sarah laughs. 

Today, Sarah brings this dedication to helping develop easier, more effective paths to better health in her role as Associate Chief Clinical Officer and Clinical Operations Lead for Verily’s care portfolio. Sarah’s life and work are a testament to the positive impact that can result when personal and professional lives intertwine.

Sarah’s commitments as a pharmacist and digital health strategist have deeply personal roots. She describes lessons learned throughout her father’s long battle with heart failure, especially helping her parents during his last, declining years. These moments gave insights on the paradigm between her knowledge and capabilities as a clinician, versus her emotions and resilience as a daughter and caretaker. Sarah realized personal identity and family relationships can’t be eclipsed by caregiver-patient dynamics.

This unique, dual lens as provider and caregiver returned years later. Sarah and colleagues had just launched Verily’s first type 1 diabetes care program, when she and her family faced an unexpected medical emergency, rushing her daughter to the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis.  Despite her professional expertise, Sarah confides nothing could’ve prepared her and her family for her daughter’s diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. But through it all, she has gained a deeper understanding of the ongoing obstacles, stressors and impacts of managing chronic conditions. Sarah shares, "Even when blood glucose readings are perfect, the all-encompassing toll — physical, mental and emotional — on people and their families endures. There is no day off from managing type 1 diabetes. The persistence is overwhelming.”  

Sarah’s personal perspective reinforced her focus to build digital health programs like Verily Lightpath that help ensure conditions don’t overshadow individual identities. She explains, “Focusing on easier access to providers, their clinical expertise, user experience, and designing personalization, diversity and accessibility into our products, we reduce the burden of chronic condition management, enabling care to be a backdrop within a person's life, not the star of life’s show."

Sarah’s first-hand view of the sacrifices and emotional hurdles when caring for a loved one means she’s also committed to prioritizing caregiver support. She reflects, “As a caretaker, your identity shifts. I need to be on top of medical needs. But I’m still a mom to my daughter, and I was a daughter to my father. Those relationships matter most. Balancing these roles with the clinical lens is a constant act of awareness and prioritization."

Sarah recounts navigating her daughter’s diabetes while striving to maintain their relationship beyond the bounds of illness. “Every interaction can’t be centered around her diabetes. At some point, we need to giggle about pop culture or Taylor Swift,” she says with a smile. She believes this balance is critical to creating and sustaining greater resilience.

On Sarah’s career journey, she was trained in data analysis and hypothesis testing in drug development. Later, these skills helped her apply continuous quality improvement cycles to develop population-health programs in ambulatory care settings, impacting care quality and outcomes.

This commitment to solutions with greater reach and ability to close care gaps drew Sarah to Verily. "It’s not the four physician visits a year that determine health outcomes with chronic conditions," she explains. "It’s what happens in between." Verily’s emphasis on tech-enabled care aligned with Sarah’s vision, first supporting the Onduo virtual chronic care program, inclusive of an intuitive app for easy access support and connected devices like continuous blood glucose monitors (CGMs) that empower patients and providers.

Sarah and team are evolving Onduo to Verily Lightpath — a holistic, scalable care offering built on Verily’s platform. Starting with cardiometabolic programs, Lightpath is expanding on Onduo’s successes and best practices. Through the member app, it offers access to a comprehensive clinical team and highly-tailored, evidence-based care enhanced with AI.

Central to the transformation to Lightpath is the integration and utilization of continuous data from CGMs and other devices, electronic health records (EHRs) and patient reported outcomes. This will help drive AI-powered decision support, personalization and more informed, timely care. Sarah’s clinical operations team and Verily experts in engineering, user experience, and data science are pioneering ways to alleviate care complexities for patients and clinicians alike. 

The AI coach within Lightpath is an always available member of the care team that can inform and guide the member in personalizing their program to make small, actionable changes that fit into busy lives, reducing the burden of self-care and supporting lasting behavior change. “We will also leverage AI to handle wellness and treatment adherence tasks that don’t require humans" Sarah explains, "Care teams will focus on more timely interventions with the AI coach sharing critical member details."

For clinicians, Verily has a forward-thinking focus and dedication to their well-being — a cause Sarah is also dedicated to. “Being on the frontlines of care is difficult, especially as chronic disease prevalence and therefore, clinical case loads increase. At Verily, we also want to help prevent staff burnout as their well-being and satisfaction are key for many reasons. I’m really proud that we’re nurturing both our members and care teams,” explains Sarah. 

Sarah and her Verily colleagues are laying the foundation for a healthier, more sustainable clinical workforce with Lightpath’s pathways that limit the stress of managing care, along with other modalities, such as:

• Optimizing care settings for safety and efficacy to ensure providers can perform at their best through measurement strategies, such as the American Medical Association’s Mini Z survey.
• Presenting clinical interfaces so data makes the best sense to aid them in delivering care.

While Sarah embraces care technology, she believes the human element must be preserved, and is excited that Verily is building a strong clinical care program and team that’s supported by innovative AI tools. “We’re not treating diseases,” she says. “We’re caring for people — real individuals with families, careers and dreams. To help people overcome the stress of managing their health and make lasting, meaningful progress, their identities can’t be overshadowed by their condition. Verily’s coaches and clinicians are essential to this member-centric approach.” 

Verily programs offer easier access to a comprehensive team of health coaches and healthcare professionals, offering support from registered dietitians, registered nurses, board-certified specialists like endocrinologists (when clinically indicated) and pharmacists  — all collaborating with each individual on their unique care management plan with the aid of an AI coach. Care teams are trained in empathy-based care and behavior-change modalities, creating essential relationships to better engage, foster trust and support mental health, such as mitigating diabetes distress, which greatly impacts daily self-management. 

Listen to diabetes care program member, Steve Aubrey, describe how connecting with his care team inspired better self-care on his personalized path to a “brighter future” with diabetes.^‡

Sarah’s team gets ongoing positive feedback and program results directly from members like Steve. However, Verily’s combination of high-tech and high-touch care is also backed by peer-reviewed research, demonstrating significant improvement in cardiometabolic health outcomes, such as significant A1C improvements in high-risk individuals with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, along with meaningful changes in other cardiometabolic biomarkers.¹ See select study outcomes in the figure below, and explore additional research insights.

Expectedly, Sarah is also an advocate for pharmacists as key providers in virtual and hybrid care models. She explains, “Pharmacists often lack adequate interaction time, tools and data for supporting medication outcomes. Lightpath offers easier access to pharmacists and medication services that are needed more than ever given both the clinical promise and complexities that GLP-1s have contributed to diabetes and weight-loss treatment.” 

Lightpath uses data and technology to enable more timely medication optimizations, along with more informed, more effective adherence support. Sarah shares that the once Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop said it best, “Medications don’t work if patients don’t take them.”  

Sarah elaborates, “There are so many individual factors that confound drug adherence and outcomes, and it’s difficult to know what they are — from personal beliefs or health literacy, to costs and access. Lightpath will also help us fill in some unknowns. For example, the AI coach will check if a member started their new Wegovy^ꞵ prescription for treating obesity, or if they’re experiencing any side effects, like nausea, diarrhea or other gastrointestinal side effects, which are common and greatly impact adherence. The AI coach will immediately share this information with the care team, triaging with a pharmacist or endocrinologist (when clinically indicated) for more timely, informed interventions.”

Sarah goes on to describe how through more data, AI innovation and our advanced clinical team, Lightpath will surface these members in need of GLP-1 and other medication support, connecting them with the appropriate provider, along with a detailed summary on the member and their medical needs. “We’ll ensure the right patient has access to the right treatment and the right ongoing care, such as vital side effect support,” she adds. “All of this will help people be more informed, empowered and able to stay on track so they can reach their weight loss and other health goals and maintain them, closing major care gaps that can improve overall medication outcomes, inclusive of GLP-1s — better health for our members, and bigger savings for our clients.”

As Verily Lightpath prepares to launch for open enrollment in January 2026, Sarah looks forward to smarter support for complex conditions. By joining innovation with a personal, human-first approach, she aims to lighten the care load for more patients, their loved ones and their providers. 

Sarah’s combined journey of life and career led to this passion for precision health, demonstrating that healthcare isn’t simply about AI algorithms and data; it’s also about the impact of empathy and dedication.  

Sarah concludes, “I’ve worked alongside major, positive changes in cardiometabolic care, such as drugs and devices. But disease prevalence and other factors, like social determinants, have outpaced and confounded them. I’m confident that Verily is driving instrumental change for better care experiences and health outcomes at both the individual and population levels. Through Lightpath, more people can gain access to the resources and support they need, for the hope and health they deserve. I think the Lightpath slogan describes this well — it’s a brighter way to care.”

* Verily Lightpath will be available for open enrollment in 2026

** Statements related to Rx treatments are for members receiving telemedicine services with licensed health care providers through Onduo P.C.

† May not be available in all 50 states

‡ Member may, or may not, be current Onduo member. Testimonials are provided by members of the Onduo program via paid sponsorship. The opinions reflect our members' personal experiences with the program. Results may vary and are not guaranteed.

^ꞵWegovy is a registered trademark of Novo Nordisk. Verily care programs are not affiliated with or endorsed by Novo Nordisk.

1. Majithia AR, Kusiak CM, Improved Glycemic Outcomes in Adults With Type 2 Diabetes Participating in a Continuous Glucose Monitor Driven Virtual Diabetes Clinic: Prospective Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2020;22(8):e21778. doi:10.2196/21778 n=55; 60 days intermittent CGM wear, n=43

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Verily Life Sciences LLC (“Verily”) offers virtual care management programs for eligible individuals, as further described in these materials and within the Verily Lightpath solution page within this website. Verily collaborates with Onduo Management Services LLC (“OMS”), Onduo LLC, and a network of affiliated Professional Entities to offer the services. These services are meant to be used in conjunction with regular in-person clinical services and not intended to replace routine primary care.