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Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | March 03, 2025
Avandra, a Cleveland-based company focused on advancing medical research, has raised $17.75 million in funding to enhance access to real-world medical imaging and clinical data for researchers, biopharmaceutical companies, and healthcare providers.
The funding round was co-led by Aegis Ventures and SpringRock Ventures, with additional participation from Memorial Hermann Health System, Northwell Health, Kompass Ventures, Greater Ventures, and individual investors Scott Gaines and Dr. Mark Montoney. The investment will support the development of Avandra’s platform, expansion of its data network, and commercial partnerships.
Ryan Tarzy, Avandra’s co-founder and CEO, highlighted the importance of linking medical imaging with longitudinal data for advancing artificial intelligence in healthcare. “Access to vast amounts of medical imaging linked to longitudinal data provides the last mile of medical AI and will enable countless medical breakthroughs," he said.
Murray Brozinsky, Aegis partner and former CEO of Conversa Health, will serve as executive chair of Avandra’s board. "We have very high conviction about the ability of real-world data to dramatically improve treatments, care plans, and equitable access for patients," Brozinsky said. "Avandra is taking a novel approach to partnering with health systems to unlock this valuable data."
The company recently announced a partnership with Datavant, a health data platform company, to integrate its federated network with Datavant’s ecosystem while maintaining patient privacy. The collaboration aims to facilitate secure and efficient data exchange for medical research.
Avandra is working to address the challenge of inaccessible imaging data stored in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Tarzy noted that most imaging research requests go unfulfilled due to the difficulty of accessing relevant data. "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," he said.
Healthcare leaders have expressed support for Avandra’s mission. Feby Abraham, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Memorial Hermann Health System, emphasized the need for better utilization of imaging data. "Our investment in Avandra reflects the growing need to organize and apply medical imaging data in a meaningful way," Abraham said.
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