Biomedical research platform Flywheel has acquired Radiologics to create the only global network for biomedical research and partnerships.

Combining their individual imaging research data management and analytical capabilities, the two will use their research platform to help organizations in academia, life sciences, clinical and medical AI fields connect with one another and share information. The goal is to help them push R&D faster in oncology, radiology and other therapeutic specialties.

"Biomedical researchers need a modern infrastructure to access and curate large volumes of imaging and associated data and manage complex AI workflows, all while maintaining data quality, privacy and compliance. Flywheel offers a comprehensive data management platform with all of the tools and research workflows in place to accelerate collaboration, enable machine learning, and streamline the massive task of data aggregation, curation and management," Flywheel CEO Jim Olson told HCB News.

Part of the funding for the acquisition came from $22 million it raised in a Series C funding round led by 8VC, a company that aims to create technology platforms that stimulate long-term economic value for the good of society. It has raised a total of $55M to date, says Olson.

The deal, he says, is expected to allow for small labs and providers to collaborate with and share data with large academic medical centers and commercial enterprises on a secure platform. No such solution exists today for research across the broader biomedical community. "We can provide a single platform for this diverse group of users to opt-in to share project information across sites regardless of the scale of their project or instance. We envision this as a great way to securely discover data across a global research network and identify potential collaborators for projects."

Using Flywheel's platform, researchers are able to collaborate and utilize machine learning in their work to streamline data aggregation, curation and management. They can build on these collaborations, as well as scale research data and analysis and accelerate discoveries with the platform's cloud scalability and automating research workflows.

With Radiologics, Flywheel will now be able to provide customers with cross-platform data and algorithm interoperability; a larger network with more opportunities to engage in research collaborations; an accelerated roadmap of new features; access to opted-in innovators all over the world for secure and compliant data research; and computational workflows for research and clinical purposes that are on-premise and can be enhanced with the cloud.

It will also offer original products and services under Radiologics, including a number of imaging informatics capabilities around the XNAT platform, an open-source imaging informatics software platform for imaging research, as well as DICOM workflows. Among these capabilities are technical support, software development, custom image processing pipelines, and staffing solutions.

Together, the two have designed a platform for end-to-end data management in clinical trials and establishing new workflows through the integration of AI algorithms into practice. They also expect to easily create patient cohorts and produce insights from relevant data for specific endeavors.

“This opens up a lot of opportunities for our MR unit and department of psychiatry to more seamlessly collaborate with other departments at Columbia, as well as outside the institution,” said Rachel Marsh, Irving Philips professor of medical psychology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and director of the MRI Research Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, in a statement.

Flywheel struck up a partnership earlier this summer with Siemens Healthineers in which it agreed to deploy a cloud-based research collaboration solution on Siemens’ teamplay digital health platform. This would help streamline communication, data sharing and solutions development between Siemens and its research partners on projects involving imaging and related non-imaging healthcare data.

Other investors in the Series C funding round include iSelect, Argonautic Ventures, Beringea, DrX/Novartis, HPE Pathfinder, Spike Ventures, Key Investments, Seraph and Great North Labs.

A specific price tag for the acquisition was not disclosed.