Data-sharing startup Avandra Imaging raises nearly $18M from top health systems, others
Avandra Imaging—a startup seeking to facilitate the sharing of medical images for research and other purposes—has raised $17.75 million from investors, the company announced Tuesday.
Seattle VC firm SpringRock Ventures co-led the financing alongside Aegis Ventures, a “startup studio” that helps entrepreneurs scale tech companies in collaboration with top hospitals. Memorial Hermann Health System and Northwell Health, who co-founded the consortium, also chipped in.
Founded in 2023, Avandra allows researchers and AI developers to access anonymized imaging data. The company offers what it says is the “world’s largest federated network” for medical imaging, seeking to free this information from PACS to help innovators develop 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,” Avandra CEO and Founder Ryan Tarzy said in a statement Feb. 18. “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.”
The company plans to use the money to further develop its platform, expand its network through partnerships, and scale commercial initiatives. Avandra was established to “organize the world’s medical images,” serving as a data marketplace for biopharma firms, researchers, physicians and artificial intelligence companies.
“Healthcare data has traditionally been siloed and underutilized,” Feby Abraham, executive VP and chief strategy officer at Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System, which owns and operates about 14 hospitals. “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.”
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.