Just a few months after exiting stealth with $62.5 million in Series A and B funding last August, San Francisco-based software company Sirona Medical, Announce Its first acquisition: Nines’ radiology AI division. Sirona declined to disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.
The deal has several key components. Sirona incorporates Nines’ advanced clinical data pipeline, machine learning engine, radiology workflow management and analysis tools, as well as its two FDA-approved radiology diagnostic products. Sirona hopes its platform will enable more seamless mass adoption of AI.
Sirona has a RadOS platform that unifies several different components of the radiology IT stack, from viewers to job lists to reporters.
Nines has teleradiology practices, proprietary work lists, practice management software, and artificial intelligence capabilities that are integrated into the radiology workflow. However, Nines has historically struggled with system integration because it relies on radiology’s disparate IT systems, as do many other radiology practices and developers.
“Combining Nines AI-powered tools with Sirona’s unified RadOS platform will give developers and radiology practices the foundation they need to optimize and deploy AI at scale,” said Cameron Andrews, CEO of Sirona Medical, in an email. facilities.” “Nines’ assets are very attractive to us due to significant progress. [it has] Date is [its] Advanced FDA Approval Algorithms NinesMeasurea lung nodule measurement algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to speed up the diagnosis of certain respiratory diseases, and Nainas AI Emergent Triage, a set of AI-driven algorithms to triage signs of time-critical, life-threatening intracranial hemorrhage and mass effect. “
Andrews said that while AI offers great value as a transformational technology, integrating it with existing radiology workflows has proven to be a sticking point for many in the radiology community. Integration is so challenging that successful AI companies in the field have avoided traditional workflows, limiting the types of applications and ultimately the impact AI can have on the field of radiology, Andrews said. .
“Sirona has identified that existing infrastructure with its siloed applications and fragmented legacy vendors is a significant barrier to AI adoption. To address this, we built a cloud-native, unified RadOS platform to ease workflow burdens and improve the use of artificial intelligence in practice,” Andrews said.
Still, persuading radiology practices to leave their old settings for more promising options is easier said than done. Doing so often requires demonstrating quantifiable improvements, such as time savings, increased productivity and improved clinical outcomes, Andrews said.
“Radiologists don’t want to buy artificial intelligence — they want to buy value (efficiency and quality), and as reimbursement rates compress each year, they need to find a way to do so within the confines of their existing software budgets,” Andrews said. “That’s what this acquisition will ultimately achieve: provide radiology practices with a one-stop, turnkey solution that will allow them to better compete and thrive in today’s challenging environment.”
Radiology practice will benefit if Sirona can deliver on this promise. Sirona wanted its RadOS platform to provide a single-vendor option that would eliminate the need to manage multiple systems, a particularly desirable outcome for practices that span multiple facilities and states. Many companies could benefit from it.
At the 2021 RSNA meeting, more than 150 AI companies participated, Andrews said. Meanwhile, the space has changed over the past few months, with RadNet acquiring Aidence and MaxQ discontinuing its Accipio portfolio, he explained. It appears that AI companies are reassessing and restructuring their go-to-market strategies to include more fully integrated solutions rather than stand-alone AI point solutions.
“The key question is whether an integrated solution needs to be part of a larger radiology practice such as RadNet or RadPartners, or whether a new entrant like Sirona can provide that solution in a more scalable way to larger independent radiology practices across the country. program,” said Andrews. “We want to give practice the tools to build a competitive advantage for ourselves, but we also believe that the future of radiology should belong to radiologists.”
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