David Lazerson runs Briya, a healthcare technology company that spends its days on a problem most people never see: the data that could speed up medical research sits locked inside hospitals, in formats that do not talk to each other, guarded by privacy rules that make sharing risky. His answer is not to loosen the rules. It is to build infrastructure that respects them by design.
As co-founder and chief executive, Lazerson has positioned Briya as a bridge between three groups that rarely move at the same speed: hospitals that hold patient records, research institutions that need them, and the life sciences companies trying to turn evidence into treatments. Briya connects them so that de-identified, real-world patient data can be found, harmonized and analyzed - while the raw records stay where they belong.
The company describes its platform as a way to achieve "longitudinal, linked and live" data while keeping compliance intact. In practice that means standardizing electronic health records to common formats such as FHIR and OMOP, automating the de-identification and contracting that usually take months, and using a federated approach so analysis can happen without the underlying data changing hands. Lazerson's framing is blunt about why this matters. "Global medical data is crucial for advancing research and improving healthcare outcomes," he has said, and the current system, in his view, gets in its own way.
That view is grounded in a specific diagnosis. Lazerson points to "the fragmented nature of the current system, combined with complex compliance issues and a lack of standardization" as the reason collaboration in medical research is so slow. Data lives in silos. Every silo has its own rules. Every cross-institution project starts from scratch. Briya's bet is that a shared, trustworthy layer removes that friction once, for everyone who plugs in.
From cyber operations to clinical data
Lazerson did not arrive at healthcare through medicine. He studied physics and cognitive science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then spent more than a decade in cybersecurity. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, working in cyber operations with the country's signals intelligence unit, before moving into the private sector as a consultant and later engagement manager at Sygnia, the incident-response firm. He went on to run Axioma Cyber Services as chief executive.
That path explains a lot about how Briya is built. Someone who has spent years defending networks tends to treat data protection as the starting assumption rather than a feature bolted on later. Briya's own shorthand for Lazerson reads "Impact maker. Privacy defender. ProFounder." The company began in 2020 with a single idea: use cryptography and techniques like zero-knowledge proofs to make healthcare data shareable, secure and compliant at the same time - three goals that usually pull against each other.
Building the network
Turning that idea into a company meant proving it in real health systems. Briya moved through early programs including the 2022 Intel Ignite accelerator and UC Berkeley's Health Engine, and put its platform to work in European and Israeli healthcare systems before pushing into the United States. In 2023 the company raised an $11.5 million Series A led by Team8, with Insight Partners, Amiti Ventures, Innocare Health Investments and the George Kaiser Family Foundation joining - bringing total funding to about $17 million.
Lazerson pitches the model as a win for the institutions that hold the data, not just the ones that want it. "Briya's data exchange platform provides a scalable and secure model," he has said, for hospitals to put their patient data to work - including generating revenue - without giving up control or compliance. It is a pragmatic argument aimed at the people who have the most to lose if privacy is handled carelessly.
Teaching an AI to think like a researcher
The clearest expression of where Lazerson wants to take Briya arrived in July 2025, when the company launched Briya AIRE. Described as a clinical-grade AI research assistant, AIRE lets researchers ask questions in plain language and translates them into epidemiologically valid, scientifically precise queries against clinical records, research databases and unstructured notes. It can design patient cohorts, test hypotheses, refine study criteria and surface patterns that manual analysis would miss - and it grounds its suggestions in peer-reviewed science.
The point, for Lazerson, is to remove a barrier he finds absurd. "Life-saving research should never be delayed because researchers and physicians are expected to become program coders," he said at launch. AIRE is meant to turn months of data wrangling into minutes, so the people who understand medicine can spend their time on the medicine.
Briya has since widened access, offering AIRE free to select academic institutions and then opening it to the global scientific community as a transparent, AI-powered research platform. That generosity fits a longer-term philosophy. Lazerson talks about "the granulation of data and adopting a data-driven approach," and he frames Briya less as a product and more as a catalyst. "We envision Briya as a catalyst for transformative advancements," he has said, "where groundbreaking research, innovative solutions for providers, and collaborative healthcare efforts become more prevalent."
The long game
What makes Lazerson's approach distinctive in an AI market full of quick demos is patience. The valuable, unglamorous work - standardization, de-identification, compliance, trust between institutions - has to come first. The AI on top only works if the data underneath is clean, legal and complete. Lazerson has built the company in that order, and the strategy reflects a founder more interested in durable infrastructure than in fast headlines. It is a counterintuitive bet: the way to unlock health data is to make sure the raw data almost never moves.