NantWorks Acquires Medical Imaging Startup Ziosoft, Receives Two Innovation Awards

NantWorks, the healthcare technology powerhouse founded by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, has had another busy week — acquiring yet another healthcare technology startup and winning two more prestigious innovation awards.

The company’s latest acquisition was for Ziosoft, a startup with a focus on 4D and 5D medical imaging and analytics.  The company’s technology is already in use across 2,000 medical installations in Japan and was a favorable target for NantWorks for its supercomputing software architecture.

“Ziosoft’s supercomputing software architecture merges CT, MR and ultrasound imaging data, regardless of the imaging device vendor,” explained Dr. Soon-Shiong.  ”This allows us to accomplish not only 3D medical imaging and analysis, but also, by now adding time and motion, 4D and 5D analysis.  Through the power of supercomputing and high performance connectivity, we can thus provide the physician with new, much enhanced capabilities for making functional and pathological diagnoses from a standard CT or MRI scan. Coupled with advanced communication technologies under NantWorks and its partners, their supercomputing technology will be the enabling portion of transporting multi-dimensional images basically anywhere in the world, bringing supercomputing to the point of care.”

Following the acquisition, Ziosoft will be renamed Qi Imaging, which translates to ““Quantitative Intelligence,” but will retain the Ziosoft name in Japan.  “The vision of Dr. Soon-Shiong is to converge all these technologies under one company enabling us to bring a true digital revolution to many aspects of people’s lives,” said Rob Royea, president and COO of Qi Imaging.  “He is bringing together experts from many different scientific backgrounds – mathematics, advanced network scientists, physicists, software engineers, mechanical engineers, among others – to create an environment of innovation for solving some of the most challenging problems of our times.”

In addition to the acquisition, NantWorks recently announced that LookTel, a technology acquired by Soon-Shiong last year, was awarded the FCC Chairman’s Award for Advancements in Accessibility.  In addition, the company announced that another one of its companies, Equipois, earned the Wall Street Journal’s prestigious Innovation award for its mechanical exoskeleton arm known as zeroG which enables workers to maneuver tools and other objects “as if weightless, with unmatched freedom of motion.”