Israeli company aims to make medical imaging accessible to all
Nanox announced last week that it raised another $26 million for its Nanox System project
By ILANIT CHERNICKThe Nanox System, which includes the Nanox.Arc and Nanox.Cloud.(photo credit: LUZ CORPORATE PHOTOGRAPHY)
Nanox, a medical imaging company based in Neveh Ilan, has raised another $26 million for its Nanox System project, which is currently in development.The company said last week that it had secured the funding with participation of strategic investor Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan and has brought the total funds raised for the Nanox System to $55m.“Foxconn is joining Fujifilm, SK Telecom and other private investors, who have previously invested in the project, as part of a round that is aimed to support Nanox’s development, commercialization and deployment of its Nanox System,” the company said in a statement.Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Nanox founder and CEO Ran Poliakine explained how the Nanox System works.“[It’s] composed of the Nanox.Arc, a novel digital X-ray device and the Nanox.Cloud, a companion cloud-based software that will be designed to provide an end-to-end medical imaging service that’s expected to include image repository, radiologist matching, online and off-line diagnostics review and annotation, connectivity to diagnostic assistive artificial intelligence systems, billing, and reporting.”According to Poliakine, the Nanox System “will promote early detection of medical conditions that are discoverable by X-ray.”He stated that the company expects that its unique digital X-ray source technology, combined with its planned software solution, “will enable it to build medical imaging systems at significantly lower costs than existing medical imaging systems to promote early detection of medical conditions that are discoverable by X-ray and X-ray based imaging modalities such as CT, mammography, fluoroscopy and angiogram.”Asked how the system will be a game changer in the medical imaging world, Poliakine said that Nanox is looking “to drive the change to make the basic, potentially life-saving, medical imaging service – accessible to all people and not only to the elitist few.“According to the World Health Organization,” he said, “two-thirds of Earth’s population don’t have access to medical imaging at all. The WHO also supports medical imaging as one of the best ways for early detection of cancer and other human conditions.”He added that Nanox’s vision is to make the Nanox.ARC “as accessible and available as the stethoscope to provide the chance of early detection for all and possibly to make preventive care and early detection for cancer real and accessible for all.”The company worked on development over the past eight years, and has produced a novel digital X-ray source that achieved a significant reduction in medical imaging systems cost and footprint.Addressing the Nanox System’s development, Poliakine said that the company has a prototype that they will be able to showcase to the media in the next few months.“The funding is aimed to support Nanox’s development, commercialization and deployment of its Nanox System,” he said.In a statement the company said that once regulatory approval is obtained, Nanox aims “to penetrate the global market by deploying its Nanox System in collaboration with governments, hospitals and clinic chains.”For 2020, Nanox is focusing on its global social impact.“This year will set the building blocks for our 1x1x1 initiative,” Poliakine told the Post. “Each individual should have proper healthcare and accessibility to medical imaging. We want to redefine and standardize medical imaging with our 1x1x1 initiative for preventive healthcare – one screening for every one symptomatic individual, every year.”He concluded that this initiative “plans to solve the issues surrounding accessibility, and the eradication of a multitude of serious conditions and diseases, by pushing towards preventative treatment and early detection.”
