How Verily uses behavioral science, clinical expertise, and AI to inspire nutritional change in cardiometabolic care

Managing chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension doesn’t start or end in a medical setting. These are lifestyle-influenced conditions that are affected by daily actions and sustained behavior change, but healthcare models aren’t necessarily designed to accommodate these realities — people’s real needs, and their real lives. For healthcare payers, including health plans and self-insured employers, these challenges directly affect abilities to realize measurable outcomes, drive lower costs, and ensure access to effective, evidence-based support.

Verily Lightpath is a next-generation, AI-enhanced virtual chronic care platform built to close these gaps. Lightpath is rooted in rigorous clinical and behavioral science, and developed to enable support that’s practical, personalized and positive.

For example, nutritional behaviors are core to cardiometabolic disease, both prevention and management. However, they remain one of the hardest areas to inspire in a meaningful, lasting way. Building on behavior change, chronic care and data science experience and expertise, Verily teams set out to research and apply a novel approach to Lightpath — grounded in psychology and clinical evidence, and driven by empathy. Lightpath makes day-to-day nutrition support as part of virtual chronic care management more scalable, and more effective, helping members build sustainable, healthier habits that can lead to better outcomes, while supporting cost efficiencies for payers.

For people living with cardiometabolic conditions, dietary changes can influence health improvements — but only if they’re achievable and sustainable. Research shows that individualized nutrition support, often delivered by registered dietitians, can improve weight loss and cardiometabolic markers. However, access is limited, and traditional and digital healthcare models lack broad enough reach and customization to meet the growing demand, while tending to individual needs. This is compounded with increases in GLP-1 medication use, which requires coordinated nutritional and clinical support to optimize outcomes.

Most people need more than just education, periodic interaction with providers and the “will power” for positive change. Instead, they need practical, timely feedback and personalized coaching that fits their preferences, lives and goals. They need tools that empower them to build new, healthy habits, not just for tracking what they eat. And they need support that’s empathetic and positive — not judgmental.

Verily teams — clinicians, behavioral scientists, user experience (UX) experts, AI engineers and others — are focused on researching and developing frameworks and digital health tools, including AI, to integrate within Lightpath. The goal: effectively addressing these challenges and needs in support of more intelligent, personalized, effective and scalable nutritional support as part of comprehensive cardiometabolic care. 

To develop a scalable framework for personalized, virtually-delivered nutrition support, Verily UX teams and registered dietitians conducted two, qualitative research studies:

1. A 10-day diary study with 21 participants managing cardiometabolic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, where users logged meals and received tailored feedback from Verily registered dietitians.
2. In-depth interviews with nine registered dietitians, experienced in cardiometabolic and GLP-1 care, to capture best practices in nutrition coaching and effective feedback strategies.

This work and research resulted in the 3Ps Framework — Practical, Positive, Personalized — a behaviorally-informed model designed to guide nutritional modules, feedback and coaching strategies, and feature development within the Lightpath platform.

The research behind the 3Ps not only shaped the framework — it also informed, and was informed by, the development and training of meal logging powered by the AI coach^† within Verily Lightpath.

Using the “Wizard of Oz” technique, where human feedback simulates automated features, Verily UX and clinical teams tested how meal logging and coaching could work in real time. These early insights helped shape an agent that now delivers:

• Tailored feedback based on user logs and goals
• Real-time suggestions that align with clinical guidance and personal preferences
• Always-on support to empower members outside of appointments
  

The outcome: Lightpath’s AI meal logging agent educates, engages, and empowers users to make informed choices every day — while giving clinicians more bandwidth for high-impact interventions, helping close care gaps and improve outcomes — health and financial.

In Lightpath, the 3Ps framework is applied to inspire member behavior change through a structured, episodic approach:

1. Baseline phase: Members start by logging their current dietary habits to surface trends and identify opportunities.
2. Goal-focused episodes: Specific, time-bound goals guide nutrition coaching and interventions — such as replacing simple carbs for complex carbs or focusing on protein while using GLP-1 medications.
3. Self-learning system: The measurement-based care model tracks engagement, adapts support, and informs ongoing personalization and experience improvements.

The result is a dynamic, feedback-rich experience that drives real behavior change — not just impacting what individuals know about diet as part of health management, but influencing what they do about it.

Verily is uniquely positioned to advance chronic care. Cross-functional teams combine deep expertise in cardiometabolic care, behavioral science, healthcare regulation, and data science and AI engineering to build solutions that are medically and scientifically rigorous, compliant, secure, patient-centric and user-friendly.

From meal logging to medication management‡ and more, Lightpath leverages AI to deliver precision care at scale — while keeping members and their care teams at the center, inclusive of:

• Extending the reach of clinicians, including escalation where necessary
• Offering personalized support for members that’s always available
• Providing AI-generated feedback that feels like trusted, tailored advice
• Delivering overall care that’s grounded in clinical context, individual goals, and compassion

Verily acknowledges the challenges and complexities of influencing lasting, positive behaviors in cardiometabolic condition management, fueling an evidence-based, effective approach, starting with nutritional behavior — the 3Ps — Practical, Positive, and Personalized. With Verily Lightpath, novel behavior change frameworks are paired with novel innovation, such as meal logging powered by an AI coach†, to deliver on the promise of precision health.

*The information contained in this post is intended to outline Verily’s general product direction and is not a commitment or legal obligation to deliver any functionality. Product capabilities, timeframes and features are subject to change and should not be viewed as commitments.

**May not be available in all 50 states

^†Feedback from the AI Coach isn't medical advice and might not be suitable for all users.

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

Persons aren’t actual Verily Lightpath members.

Verily Life Sciences LLC (“Verily”) offers virtual care management programs for eligible individuals, as further described in this material and at verily.com. 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.