Avandra, a federated network for medical imaging and clinical data, announced it has raised $17.75 million to accelerate the use of imaging-centric data for research and patient care. Aegis (a venture studio creating health technology companies in collaboration with leading health systems) is co-leading the financing with SpringRock Ventures. And Memorial Hermann Health System and Northwell Health, founding members of the Aegis Digital Consortium, have also invested in the company, along with Kompass Ventures, Greater Ventures, Scott Gaines, and Dr. Mark Montoney.
The company—which was co-founded by Aegis Ventures and Founder and CEO Ryan Tarzy—will use the capital to develop Avandra’s platform further, expand its data network through partnerships with leading health systems and providers, and scale its commercial initiatives with biopharma and medical researchers.
Imaging represents an essential class of healthcare data that contains tremendous value, but it often lies fallow in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) because it’s difficult, costly, and time-consuming to access.
Avandra had recently announced a strategic partnership with Datavant, a health data platform company focused on making the world’s health data secure, accessible, and usable. The partnership enables the seamless integration of Avandra’s extensive federated network for medical imaging and clinical data into the Datavant ecosystem while ensuring patient privacy. The partnership supports Avandra’s trusted data exchange ecosystem and integrates multimodal last-mile data, including imaging and clinical data, into its network.
KEY QUOTES:
“We have very high conviction about the ability of real-world data to dramatically improve treatments, care plans, and equitable access for patients. And we believe health systems hold the keys to this future. Avandra is taking a novel approach to partnering with health systems to unlock this valuable data,” said Brozinsky. “We’re thrilled to be working with Ryan and his talented team to position Avandra as the go-to source for biopharma, medical researchers, and AI companies to enhance their research and development and make evidence-based treatments available to more people more quickly.”
– Murray Brozinsky, Aegis Partner and former CEO of Conversa Health, will serve as Executive Chair of the Board
“We are excited to partner with Ryan and his exceptional team, along with Aegis Ventures. Avandra is empowering medical innovators and accelerating the future of medicine.”
– Kirsten Morbeck, Managing Director of SpringRock Ventures, has also joined the Board
“Access to vast amounts of medical imaging linked to longitudinal data provides the last mile of medical AI and will enable countless medical breakthroughs. We estimate over 90% of imaging data research requests go unfulfilled because available solutions can’t meet the required inclusion and exclusion criteria. Our vision is to crawl, index, and make available 1 trillion images to bring forward the future of medicine and help deliver new treatments, earlier diagnosis, and better patient care. Our health system relationships and integrations give us a jumpstart on this mission.”
– CEO Ryan Tarzy
“Healthcare data has traditionally been siloed and underutilized. Our investment in Avandra reflects the growing need to organize and apply medical imaging data in a meaningful way. We believe high-quality imaging data supports innovation and empowers research that advances evidence-based and patient-centric solutions.”
– Feby Abraham, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Memorial Hermann Health System
“We fully support Avandra’s mission of unlocking medical imaging data for enhanced medical research and improved patient outcomes. We look forward to the collaborations and innovations that will be created by this partnership.”
– Kate O’Donnell, Managing Director of Northwell Holdings at Northwell Health
