Flywheel is the leading research data platform that’s transforming the way biomedical and imaging data are managed at life sciences, clinical, and academic institutions globally. Flywheel streamlines the entire research workflow including data capture, curation, computation, and secure collaboration. By leveraging cloud scalability and automating workflows, we help organizations scale research data and analysis, improve scientific collaboration, and accelerate discoveries.
Dr. Brian Wandell is the Director of the Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging at Stanford University, a shared research facility that provides imaging and compute resources to more than 40 research labs. A number of years ago, Wandell recognized 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, computing and sharing the data. The result was so successful that other collaborators and post-doctorates 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 world-wide.
In 2015, Wandell and Schaefer partnered with Minnesota-based Invenshure to create a product based on the idea born at Stanford. Since then, Flywheel has grown into a comprehensive solution for life sciences, clinical research, imaging research, and artificial intelligence (AI) developers to manage their research workflows. The company now works with over 30 clients and grew from 15 to 50 employees in 2019. We expect to employ 100 highly-skilled people in 2020.
“With Flywheel on Google Cloud Platform, we can stay closely connected with labs down the street or around the world, greatly increasing the efficiency of our collaborations by simplifying the process of data and computational sharing,” says Dr. Wandell. “We’re helping to keep our researchers focused and productive.”
Accelerating the Future of Healthcare
As healthcare continues to evolve and innovative care models like precision care become more of a reality, the need for scalable data management and a collaborative approach to research are critical.
Precision medicine relies on having a 360- degree view of a patient with all of the relevant data in one place. Flywheel offers researchers a system that can scale data capture, curation and computation for machine learning and help drive the development of AI applications that can truly change the way health care is delivered to patients around the world.
Additionally, collaboration is increasingly important to solve today’s healthcare issues. Researchers must work across historically-siloed disciplines and organizations to share data and analysis in a secure,compliant and reproducible platform. Flywheel provides a comprehensive research data solution with all the tools needed for curation, image processing, machine learning workflows, and secure collaboration.
Local and Global Innovation
Flywheel is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN with offices in the Bay Area, Texas, Boston, Canada and Hungary. Being located in “Medical Alley”, the center of so much health technology and care innovation, provides access to a community of health leaders and an incredible pool of talent to help us grow our organization and make a bigger impact globally.
Flywheel has long been forging partnerships with top academic research institutions around the world. These institutions are driving forward important discoveries to help provide better treatment options for people with neurological and cognitive disorders. In more recent years, we’ve expanded our footprint to include partnerships with life sciences organizations and AI companies that are driving forward important innovations to discover and deliver new precision care and AI applications. Richardson, CEO of Flywheel. “Flywheel is an incredible place to work. Where else can you help researchers around the world solve critical healthcare challenges while developing truly innovative, world-class technology?”
