Avandra Hires Healthtech Veterans to Lead Aggressive Growth in Medical Imaging Data

BRECKSVILLE, Ohio – February 19, 2026 – Medical imaging data company Avandra has appointed two seasoned healthcare technology leaders in a strategic move designed to significantly accelerate its commercial expansion and solidify its position in the burgeoning real-world data market. The company announced today that it has hired Justin North as Head of Life Sciences and Network Growth and Chip Kay as Head of Sales for Image Sharing.

The appointments come just months after Avandra's pivotal acquisitions of DatCard Systems and Sorna Corporation, which established the company's vast footprint across major U.S. academic medical centers. With these new leaders, Avandra is signaling a clear intent to capitalize on that foundation, aiming to bridge the gap between routine clinical image sharing and the high-demand world of AI development and life sciences research.

"I'm thrilled to welcome Justin and Chip to the Avandra leadership team to meaningfully accelerate our commercial growth as we scale up the industry's first comprehensive medical imaging platform to support patient care, research, and innovation," said Ryan Tarzy, Founder and CEO of Avandra Imaging. "With these key additions we are doubling down on our mission to unlock clinical data to overcome previously impossible medical challenges, bringing hope and medical breakthroughs that transform patient lives."

The Architects of a New Growth Phase

The new hires bring decades of specialized experience to execute Avandra’s ambitious, two-pronged strategy. Justin North is tasked with expanding what Avandra calls the largest federated network of imaging data. He will lead the company's life sciences business, forging partnerships with biopharma, medical device companies, and clinical research organizations (CROs). These partnerships are crucial for leveraging Avandra's platform for complex applications like clinical trial execution, AI model training, and regulatory-grade real-world evidence generation.

North’s background makes him uniquely suited for the role. He joins Avandra from TriNetX, widely recognized as the world's largest federated network of real-world Electronic Health Record (EHR) data. As VP of Product Management there, he was instrumental in building and scaling data and analytics products for the life sciences sector. His experience in creating large-scale federated data networks—and using them to solve complex research challenges, such as improving diversity in clinical trials—provides a proven blueprint for Avandra's imaging-centric goals.

Complementing North’s focus on the research market, Chip Kay will lead the sales organization for Avandra's core image and data-exchange business. With over two decades of experience, Kay will oversee the go-to-market strategy for the company's enterprise hardware and software solutions targeted at health systems, hospitals, and imaging centers. His deep expertise in driving revenue and strategic adoption of enterprise imaging solutions is critical for strengthening and expanding the foundational clinical network upon which Avandra's research ambitions are built.

Kay's resume includes senior sales leadership roles at a who's who of healthcare IT and imaging giants, including Canon Medical Informatics, Intelerad Medical Systems, Merative, and Merge Healthcare. This extensive background provides him with deep industry relationships and a nuanced understanding of the procurement and implementation challenges within complex hospital environments.

Building on a Foundation of Clinical Connectivity

Avandra’s strategy is not being built in a vacuum. The company, co-founded in 2024, made a decisive market move in late 2025 by acquiring DatCard Systems and Sorna Corporation. This move instantly transformed Avandra from a promising startup into a major player with an established infrastructure and a massive client base. DatCard is a market leader in DICOM distribution with its PacsCube™ solution, while Sorna has been a pioneer in automated medical data distribution for over 25 years with its Vertex Platform.

Together, these entities serve a majority of Academic Medical Centers in the United States and more than half of all National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers. This pre-existing network for sharing clinical imaging data for patient care provides Avandra with an unparalleled advantage. Instead of building a research network from scratch, the company is layering its data aggregation and de-identification platform on top of an infrastructure that is already deeply embedded in the daily workflows of the nation's top hospitals.

This integration allows Avandra to offer a unique value proposition: it can help hospitals manage their immediate, point-of-care image sharing needs while also providing them with a pathway to participate in—and benefit from—large-scale research initiatives. This symbiotic relationship aims to solve a persistent industry problem by creating a sustainable model for data sharing that benefits both patient care and medical innovation.

Unlocking the Untapped Potential of Medical Imaging

For years, the vast majority of medical imaging data—a rich source of information for understanding disease progression and treatment efficacy—has remained locked away in siloed hospital Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Accessing this data for research has been a costly, time-consuming, and technically complex challenge, significantly slowing the pace of AI development and real-world evidence studies.

The demand for this data has never been higher. AI developers require large, diverse, and well-curated datasets to train and validate diagnostic algorithms. Life sciences companies increasingly rely on real-world evidence to support regulatory submissions, demonstrate value, and optimize clinical trials. Avandra's federated network model is designed to meet this demand directly. By connecting to hospital systems, it enables researchers to securely query and analyze de-identified data without the data ever leaving the hospital's firewall, thus preserving patient privacy and institutional control.

This approach directly addresses the core challenges of data interoperability and governance that have long plagued healthcare. The appointments of North and Kay are pivotal to executing this vision. Kay's team is responsible for reinforcing and expanding the clinical data exchange network, ensuring the data pipelines are robust and trusted by providers. Simultaneously, North's team will build the commercial bridges to the life sciences and AI communities, turning that pipeline of data into actionable insights and research breakthroughs. The synergy between their roles is central to Avandra's mission to create a fluid marketplace for medical imaging data, transforming a once-static asset into a dynamic resource for advancing medicine.