Austrian healthtech startup Contextflow raises €6.7M to help radiologists be more efficient; here’s how

Vienna-based Contextflow, a company that uses AI imaging technology to support radiologists, announced that it has raised €6.7M in its Series A round of funding. 

The first closing was led by B&C Innovation Investments with participation from new co-investor TTIP Beteiligungs and current investors APEX Ventures, Crista Galli Ventures, IST cube, Nina Capital, and Novacapital.

Contextflow also stated that a second closing included an additional €2M from new co-investor Peak Pride Management, HPH (Hans Peter Haselsteiner) Start-up Unit and current investor APEX Ventures with its “APEX Best in Class” fund. 

The company reported that this is one of Europe’s largest Series A healthtech investments this year.

Capital utilisation

The proceeds from this round will help the company to accelerate market entry in Europe and US, and obtain FDA clearance for Contextflow SEARCH, an AI-based, Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) web application for 3D medical imaging data.

Additionally, the funds will also be used to extend the company’s offerings to include new features and products covering a wider range of organs and modalities.

Aims to improve radiology workflows

Founded in 2016 by Georg Langs, Allan Hanbury, Markus Holzer, and René Donner, Contextflow is a spinoff from the Medical University of Vienna (MUW), supported by the Technical University of Vienna (TU) and European research project KHRESMOI.

The company develops deep learning-based software to improve radiology workflows, which helps radiologists save time as well as improve reporting quality. Its core technology is a 3D image-based search engine (SEARCH) that detects disease patterns in 3D medical images like CTs and MRIs.

SEARCH helps radiologists with information for the identification and interpretation of lung-specific image patterns in CT scans and is intended to support radiologists in objective image assessment and reporting.

According to Contextflow, the tech is currently being used by radiologists on lung CTs, identifying 19 different patterns (including those related to COVID-19), making it the only clinical decision support system of its kind. SEARCH also provides transparency, which helps radiologists to easily see and understand why the algorithm provided a given result.

Markus Holzer explains, “Contextflow takes a general approach and develops software that can be extended to additional modalities and organs. This makes Contextflow the broadest AI software in the radiology field worldwide.”