Now Vienna-based contextflow has secured a financing round led by APEX Ventures together with two new international investors: Crista Galli Ventures and Nina Capital. "We are excited to have invested in contextflow and look forward to working together to shape the future of medical imaging," says radiologist Dr. Fiona Pathiraja, Founder and Managing Partner of Crista Galli Ventures.
Marta-Gaia Zanchi, Founder and Managing Partner of Nina Capital continues: "contextflow was born in response to important challenges in modern radiology: radiologists today deal with an increasing amount of data, fine-grained disease variants that are the key for effective treatment decisions, and an ever-increasing workload. contextflow has addressed this problem by finding a way to support radiologists during the process of image interpretation without disrupting their routine workflow in order to drastically reduce the time required for accurate diagnosis. For us, this company has it all: a thoughtful and ambitious team, a compelling and timely need, a deep-tech solution designed in response to this need that leverages a large and credible data asset, and a business model built on top of a very sophisticated understanding of how the system works".
Image Analysis Within Seconds
How does the contextflow solution work? A radiologist simply marks a region of interest in a scan (currently the company is working with lung CTs), and the software retrieves reference cases from other patients based on visual disease pattern detection. The system also provides medical literature helpful for differential diagnosis, all within seconds. "There’s no more need for time-consuming and frustrating searches in different websites and books to find the information you need. It’s now just a mouse click away," promises Markus Holzer, Co-founder and CEO of contextflow. contextflow's technology analyzes and learns from far more images than a radiologist sees in their normal working hours.
Up Next: International Proof of Concepts
contextflow will use the fresh capital to obtain CE certification and accelerate the international proof of concepts (POCs). Currently, POCs with seven clinics in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Croatia are underway before scaling to other international markets in the coming year.
APEX Ventures is a European-based company builder backing technology ventures in Europe and the US, amongst others, in the fields of AI for medical applications, mobile forensics and insurance for autonomous vehicles, with a focus on unique and defendable intellectual property and above average market potential. apex.ventures
Crista Galli Ventures is backed by a Danish family office and invests in European and UK-based medical technology companies who develop cutting edge AI technology to improve patient outcomes.
IST Cube is a seed fund providing equity and support to deep tech and science-based startups. ist-cube.com
Nina Capital is an European micro-VC firm investing in need-driven founders building companies at the intersection of healthcare and information technology. nina.capital