ECONOMICS

Ziosoft announced that it has joined NantWorks, a newly formed healthcare, educational, scientific and communications technology company led by Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D. Under the agreement, Ziosoft will be wholly owned by NantWorks.

"Ziosoft's supercomputing software architecture merges CT, MR and ultrasound imaging data, regardless of the imaging device vendor," said Dr. Soon-Shiong. "This allows us to accomplish not only 3D medical imaging and analysis, but also, by now adding time and motion, 4D and 5D analysis. Through the power of supercomputing and high performance connectivity, we can thus provide the physician with new, much enhanced capabilities for making functional and pathological diagnoses from a standard CT or MRI scan. Coupled with advanced communication technologies under NantWorks and its partners, this supercomputing technology will be the enabling portion of transporting multi-dimensional images basically anywhere in the world, bringing supercomputing to the point of care."

Ziosoft will be renamed Qi Imaging - referring to the "Quantitative Intelligent" image data that is automatically generated from 5th dimensional imaging, as well as referring to the Chinese understanding of the life force. The name Ziosoft will be retained in Japan where the company has a large share of the advanced visualization market with more than 2,000 Ziostation systems installed.

NantWorks is combining several technology businesses into a single entity for the purpose of bringing the digital revolution to the service of healthcare, education, science and the justice system, as well as taking digital entertainment to an entirely new level. Since selling the two companies he founded -- American Pharmaceutical Partners in 2008 and Abraxis BioScience in 2010 -- Dr. Soon-Shiong has invested in excess of $400 million acquiring and developing numerous digital technologies.

Ziosoft's PhyZiodynamic solutions provide cutting-edge algorithms for functional imaging analysis in multiple dimensions. This open standard software technology utilizes lossless image data, which ensures the true fidelity of all data at all times for any DICOM imaging modality. This has resulted in precise image quality, optimized user efficiency, potential for significant dose reduction and maximum cost effectiveness for an extensive range of clinical applications.

"The vision of Dr. Soon-Shiong is to converge all these technologies under one company enabling us to bring a true digital revolution to many aspects of people's lives," said Rob Royea, president and COO, Qi Imaging. "He is bringing together experts from many different scientific backgrounds -- mathematicians, advanced network scientists, physicists, software engineers, mechanical engineers, among others -- to create an environment of innovation for solving some of the most challenging problems of our times. Additionally, Ziosoft's founder and technical visionary, Kazuhiko Matsumoto, will remain as a partial owner and significant member of our team. We are excited to become a part of this incredibly significant effort by Dr. Soon-Shiong and his team."