Flywheel’s Origins
Early days. Dr. Brian Wandell, Director of the Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging at Stanford University, recognized a number of years ago that the growth and complexity of research data sets posed a challenge: labs needed a better way to carry out advanced medical imaging research.
In response to this need, Wandell partnered with his colleague, Gunnar Schaefer, to develop a system that captures images from MRI scanners, organizes and curates the images into a database, and provides users with a web interface for viewing and sharing the data. The result was so successful that other collaborators leaving Stanford wanted to take the system with them. Wandell and Schaefer knew they had something that could fill a real need, and help accelerate imaging research and collaboration worldwide.
In 2015, Wandell and Schaefer partnered with Minnesota-based Invenshure to create a product from the idea born at Stanford. Since then, Flywheel has grown into a comprehensive solution for pharmaceutical companies, providers, payers, system integrators, AI developers and academic medical centers to manage their research and machine learning workflows.
In 2021, after just over five years on the market, Flywheel expanded its capabilities and feature sets with the acquisition of Radiologics, creating a single imaging data and AI that accelerates research and machine learning development for healthcare innovation.
In 2023, Flywheel announced the evolution of its managed service into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, Flywheel Core. Through key partner integrations, Flywheel Core provides new opportunities for users to take advantage of an end-to-end AI development experience, all within one platform. Users can accelerate model development by freeing up data preparation time, enabling reproducibility of AI models, and facilitating collaboration between medical researchers, data scientists, and their stakeholders.
Flywheel’s unparalleled end-to-end data and AI solutions are opening new possibilities for users around the world.
Flywheel’s Future
As healthcare evolves to incorporate more data-driven and AI-assisted care, researchers’ needs for efficiently accessing and managing complex data will only grow. Flywheel is proud to play a part in accelerating discoveries that are changing the way healthcare is delivered to patients around the world.