SHEFAYIM, Israel, April 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Completes $8m seed round led by Khosla Ventures to accelerate the creation of imaging insights tools for HMOs and ACOs
Zebra Medical Vision launched a closed beta of its Medical Imaging Research platform and announced funding of $8 million led by Khosla Ventures, with participating parties DeepFork Capital and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) CEO Marc Benioff. The company's solution enables researchers to quickly develop imaging algorithms and insights based on large scale datasets and advanced processing power. Zebra's commercialization pipeline will then expedite clinical application of imaging research products.
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With a billion people joining the middle class by 2020, and an aging global population, the demand for medical imaging is rapidly increasing. Fast, accurate diagnosis is paramount, and is getting increasingly difficult to achieve with existing Radiology resources. Medical Imaging storage has grown tenfold since 2005 according to a Frost&Sullivan report and continues to grow with more advanced modalities. Therefore there is an acute need for accurate automated tools to enable high quality diagnostic insights at scale.
"Advances in machine learning and computer vision have made it possible to create diagnostic quality algorithms based on big data, that surpass current reading accuracy rates. Such algorithms will reduce false positives, identify false negatives, provide earlier diagnosis of cancer or other diseases and unlock incidental findings hidden in the vast amounts of imaging data that resides within archives of health providers," said Elad Benjamin, Zebra Medical CEO and former General Manager of the Carestream Healthcare Information Solutions group.
"I have frequently commented that technology will reinvent healthcare as we know it," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. "Zebra is combining the power of machine learning, computer vision and big data to do just that in medical imaging - creating a sandbox through which imaging innovation can occur and be delivered to patients. We are proud to back such a team and an ambitious endeavor and look forward to seeing the outcomes of the platform."
Zebra's platform offers a cloud-based, fully hosted research and development environment. This includes access to large datasets of structured, de-identified studies, storage, state-of-the-art GPU computing power and support for a multitude of research tools. The platform also enables research groups to collaborate and create joint tools.
"Zebra is the only platform today that offers such seamless access to both the tools and the needed datasets and research environment - and at such a large scale," said Professor Gabriel Krestin, Professor of Radiology, Chair of Radiology at Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam and past President of the European Society of Radiology. "This will finally enable providers to bring medical imaging into the fold of large scale clinical analysis and population management."
The Zebra platform is initially being launched to select research groups. Researchers and machine learning practitioners can apply for an invite here. ACOs and HMOs are welcome to participate and learn how can better imaging insights improve care and reduce costs.
About Zebra Medical Vision Ltd
Zebra Medical Vision has set out to create the world's largest medical imaging insights platform. We believe that by providing machine-learning researchers the needed tools and datasets we can accelerate development of advanced decision support tools and diagnosis needed to serve the worlds population. Headquartered in Kibutz Shfayim Israel, the Company was founded in 2014 by Co-Founders Eyal Toledano, Eyal Gura and Elad Benjamin.
More info at http://www.zebra-med.com
Contact:
Elad Benjamin
info@zebra-med.com
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