Health Systems Among Investors in Imaging Data Company Avandra

Avandra, which has developed a federated network for medical imaging and clinical data, has raised $17.75 million to accelerate the use of imaging-centric data for research and patient care. 

The Cleveland-based company was co-founded by Aegis Ventures along with founder and CEO Ryan Tarzy. 

Aegis, a venture studio creating health tech companies in collaboration with leading health systems, is co-leading the financing with SpringRock Ventures. Memorial Hermann Health System and Northwell Health, founding members of the Aegis Digital Consortium, are also among the investors. The capital will be used to further develop Avandra’s platform, 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 important class of healthcare data that contains tremendous value but oftentimes lies fallow in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) because it’s difficult, costly, and time-consuming to access, Avandra noted. 

“Access to vast amounts of medical imaging linked to longitudinal data provides the last mile of medical AI and will enable countless medical breakthroughs,“ said Tarzy in a statement. "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.”

“Healthcare data has traditionally been siloed and underutilized,” said Feby Abraham, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Memorial Hermann Health System, in a statement. “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.”

“We fully support Avandra’s mission of unlocking medical imaging data for enhanced medical research and improved patient outcomes,” said Kate O’Donnell, managing director of Northwell Holdings at Northwell Health, in a statement. “We look forward to the collaborations and innovations that will be created by this partnership.”

Avandra recently announced a strategic partnership with health data platform company Datavant. The companies said the collaboration enables the seamless integration of Avandra’s extensive federated network for medical imaging and clinical data into the Datavant ecosystem. The partnership supports Avandra’s trusted data exchange ecosystem and integrates multimodal last-mile data, including imaging and clinical data, into its network.