Nanox To Acquire Zebra Medical Vision For Up To $200M

Israeli medical imaging firm Nanox announced on Tuesday that it will acquire AI medical imaging insights startup Zebra Medical Vision for approximately $200 million in a deal that positions the future combined company as a force in the medical tech industry.

Nanox will pay $100 million upfront for the acquisition, and up to another $100 million tied to achievements of specific milestones, all to be paid in Nanox shares, the companies explained in a statement.

Zebra Medical is expected to be run as a wholly-owned subsidiary under the Nanox brand. 

Zebra Medical was founded in 2014 by Eyal Toledano, Eyal Gura, and Elad Benjamin, as an AI solution that reads medical scans and automatically detects anomalies, helping radiologists with workflow and efficiency. Through its development and use of different algorithms, Zebra Medical has been able to identify visual symptoms for diseases such as breast cancer, osteoporosis, and fatty liver as well as conditions such as aneurysms and brain bleeds.

The company has seven FDA clearances for its solutions which are used in hospitals in the US, Europe, Australia, India, and Latin America.

Nanox, a public company traded on the Nasdaq, was founded in 2018 and developed a commercial-grade digital X-ray machine that competes with larger, more expensive machines at a fraction of the cost (approximately $10,000 compared to several million) and weight (about 70kg compared to about 2,000 kg for a CT scanner). The company’s stated mission is to increase the availability of imaging as a standard of care.

The company’s Nanox.Arc is paired with the Nanox.Cloud, a software for medical imaging services that offer image repository, radiologist matching, diagnostics review and annotation, connectivity to diagnostic assistive AI systems, billing, and reporting. The system aims to improve the accessibility and affordability of early detection services through medical screening as a service (MSaaS).

Under the acquisition agreement, Zebra Medical will embed its AI solutions into Nanox’s imaging equipment, “making medical imaging for diagnosis more easily accessible and affordable across the globe—especially for under-resourced communities — delivered using a scalable cloud infrastructure,” the companies said.

“Zebra Medical Vision has always operated with the goal of expanding the use of AI in medical imaging to improve health outcomes for patients worldwide,” said Zohar Elhanani, CEO of Zebra Medical Vision. “At this time, we understand that that vision is best served by joining forces with a trusted partner with the means to boost our capabilities and propel population health, powered by AI, to the next level. Screening populations to detect and treat chronic disease early has proven to improve outcomes, and we’re thrilled to be taking the helm of the population health transformation in healthcare.”

Ran Poliakine, chairman and CEO of Nanox said that “expanding access to medical imaging via widespread deployment of the Nanox.ARC solves one of the obstacles to achieving true population health management.

The Nanox.ARC, together with Zebra Med would move us toward our vision of deploying our systems. Our plan is to double down on Zebra Med’s AI and cloud platform effort, strengthen the industry-leading team even further, and solidify Zebra Med’s leadership position in the radiology space. This strategic move represents an end-to-end, globally-connected medical imaging solution,” added Poliakine.

Nanox also announced the intended acquisition of Fort Lauderdale-based teleradiology company USARAD and its afiliate, Medical Diagnostics Web, for approximately $30 million. USARAD operates a global network of 300 radiologists while Medical Diagnostics Web connects between imaging facilities and radiologists.

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