South Korea-based healthcare startup AIRS Medical announced today that it raised approximately $20 million in a Series B funding round.
New investors Q Capital Partners and Hanwha Life joined the round, which also included participation from Klim Ventures, which contributed to AIRS Medical’s Series A round.
Seoul National University graduates co-founded AIRS Medical in 2018. It develops digitalized, AI-based diagnostic tests and robotics technologies aimed at providing a better clinical experience for both patients and healthcare providers, according to a news release.
The SwiftMR artificial intelligence (AI)-powered magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction software has been developed and commercialized, the company said. AIRS Medical designed the platform to enhance MR images acquired under various conditions to offer a higher level of data accuracy and a better patient experience.
SwiftMR has FDA and Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) approval dating back to last year. The platform is now being introduced beyond Korea in the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia and South America, having also won both the 2019 and 2020 fastMRI Challenge co-hosted by Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and NYU Langone Health.
The company earlier this year acquired artiQ, an AI-based and robotics-based startup that shares its vision, successfully adding in-vitro diagnostics to AIRS Medical’s technology portfolio, which also features venipuncture automation. The company said that, moving forward, it plans to use its technology and clinical expertise to introduce consecutive diagnostic test solutions that “innovate the cost structure of the medical industry.”
“We believe we can transform the healthcare ecosystem by solving the current dependency on analog machines by replacing them with data-driven medicine,” Hye-seong Lee, CEO of AIRS Medical, said in the news release. He continued, “Through the Series B funding we’ve secured, we will be taking our innovative diagnostic solutions to the global market.”
