Avandra Raises $17.7 Million in New Funding

Avandra has raised $17.75 million to accelerate the use of imaging-centric data for research and patient care. The capital will be used to further develop the company’s platform, expand its data network through partnerships with health systems and providers, and scale its commercial initiatives with medical researchers.

Avandra was co-founded by Aegis Ventures and Founder/CEO Ryan Tarzy. A venture studio creating HealthTech companies in collaboration with leading health systems, Aegis co-led the financing with SpringRock Ventures with contributions from Memorial Hermann Health System and Northwell Health, (Aegis Digital Consortium founding members), Kompass Ventures, Greater Ventures, Scott Gaines, and Dr. Mark Montoney.

Aegis Partner Murray Brozinsky, former Conversa Health CEO, will serve as Avandra’s executive board chair. “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,” he said. “Avandra is taking a novel approach to partnering with health systems to unlock this valuable data. We’re thrilled to be working with Ryan and his team to position Avandra as the go-to source for medical researchers and AI companies to enhance their research and development and make evidence-based treatments available to more people more quickly.”

“We are excited to partner with Ryan and his team, along with Aegis Ventures. Avandra is empowering medical innovators and accelerating the future of medicine,” added SpringRock Ventures Managing Director Kirsten Morbeck, who has also joined Avandra’s board.

Imaging represents an important class of healthcare data that has significant value but oftentimes lies fallow in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) because it is difficult, costly, and time-consuming to access.

“Access to vast amounts of medical imaging linked to longitudinal data provides the last mile of medical AI and will enable countless medical breakthroughs,“ Tarzy stated. “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. “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. “We look forward to the collaborations and innovations that will be created by this partnership.”

Avandra recently announced a strategic partnership with Datavant, a health data platform company attempting to make the world’s health data secure, accessible, and usable. The collaboration 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 data exchange ecosystem and integrates multimodal last-mile data, including imaging and clinical data, into its network.

Avandra is creating the largest federated network for de-identified medical image data to overcome previously impossible medical challenges. Recognizing the vital role of medical imaging and clinical data in healthcare diagnoses and research, Avandra was established to organize the world’s medical images to advance research and innovation. Its network serves as a diverse data marketplace for biopharma, researchers, providers, and AI companies.