Expanding into Digital Diagnostics: Letter from Andy Beck, MD, PhD - Co-Founder and CEO of PathAI
Last week, PathAI officially launched AISightTM 1, which is a state-of-the-art digital pathology image management system for anatomic pathology laboratories seeking to adopt digital pathology. AISight’s launch marks a pivotal milestone for us in our mission to improve patient outcomes with AI-powered pathology. PathAI has always believed that advances in research and drug development today drive meaningful advances in the future of clinical practice. As such, over the past six years, we have worked extensively with biopharma companies and academic researchers to advance translational research in pathology and drive clinical trial success through the deployment of artificial intelligence.
Now we believe we’re hitting a turning point. More and more biopharma partners are asking about the adoption of digital pathology in the clinic, as they contemplate leveraging the power of AI to drive patient enrollment into clinical trials and build new complementary or companion diagnostics. At the same time, there’s growing interest from anatomic pathology laboratories to enable cross-institutional collaboration, capture workflow efficiencies, and standardize diagnostic decisions through digital pathology and artificial intelligence.
We’re capitalizing on this momentum. Over the past year, we’ve spoken to hundreds of pathologists across a large number of institutions in the US and EU. One of the most common themes we heard is that pathologists are looking for a true partner that not only provides a best-in-class product but also serves as a thought partner and consultant as they embark on this new journey towards a digital workflow. Someone who can provide expertise on everything digital pathology, from integration of digital pathology systems into lab information systems, data storage, and artificial intelligence applications across a broad number of use cases, stain types, tumor types, and inflammatory conditions.
We can understand where these pathologists are coming from. We operate a large-scale anatomic pathology laboratory at PathAI Diagnostics. We went through a similar exercise there evaluating a myriad of solutions. The market is complex and fragmented - there are many scanner vendors, image management system vendors, and artificial intelligence vendors. However, none offer the full breadth of offerings that uniquely position an anatomic pathology laboratory to go digital and build the business case. Some offer a scanner and an image management system but a limited number of artificial intelligence applications for only very specific use cases. Others offer an image management system alone but do not have partnerships with the leading scanner vendors to drive seamless integrations. And yet others only build artificial intelligence applications - failing to deliver on the value that artificial intelligence can bring in broader workflow optimization. It’s a complex field - there’s no doubt about it.
We believe we are uniquely positioned to be that true partner to labs looking to go digital. We’ve always been a leader in algorithm development, gathering data from diverse sources, leveraging our contributor network of 550+ pathologists to annotate cases, and developing state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to build generalizable models capable of robust performance across laboratories. Over the past six years, we’ve launched almost a hundred algorithms for our biopharma and academic research partners. These algorithms span many use cases including automated quality control, tumor detection and quantification, characterization of the tumor and immune microenvironment, standardization of disease severity assessment, biomarker quantitation, biomarker prediction, and prediction of clinical outcomes.
With the launch of AISight Image Management SystemTM, we’ve now taken our expertise in algorithm development to create a next-generation image management system for laboratories looking to go digital. Our workflows are built with the benefits of artificial intelligence in mind and our platform leverages recent advances in software engineering, cloud computing, and advances in AI to optimize performance at scale. Imagine being able to deploy a detailed and exhaustive single-cell resolution AI-based pre-screen of each case to prioritize cases for review and downstream molecular testing. We are working towards enabling these next-gen workflows and more - an AI-first IMS is the next-gen IMS.
Our strategy has always been centered on the concept of a flywheel. Advances in translational research drive clinical trial success, which yield new therapies that are AI-enabled and digitally-driven for pathologists and patients in anatomic pathology laboratories. Real-world data from these laboratories then feeds back into refining the research questions we ask every day in pathology. We’re excited to close the loop with the launch of a product targeted at anatomic pathology laboratories, one of many exciting developments to come in the next few weeks for this customer segment and a meaningful advance in our mission of improving patient outcomes with AI-powered pathology.
1 AISight is for Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.
Now we believe we’re hitting a turning point. More and more biopharma partners are asking about the adoption of digital pathology in the clinic, as they contemplate leveraging the power of AI to drive patient enrollment into clinical trials and build new complementary or companion diagnostics. At the same time, there’s growing interest from anatomic pathology laboratories to enable cross-institutional collaboration, capture workflow efficiencies, and standardize diagnostic decisions through digital pathology and artificial intelligence.
We’re capitalizing on this momentum. Over the past year, we’ve spoken to hundreds of pathologists across a large number of institutions in the US and EU. One of the most common themes we heard is that pathologists are looking for a true partner that not only provides a best-in-class product but also serves as a thought partner and consultant as they embark on this new journey towards a digital workflow. Someone who can provide expertise on everything digital pathology, from integration of digital pathology systems into lab information systems, data storage, and artificial intelligence applications across a broad number of use cases, stain types, tumor types, and inflammatory conditions.
We can understand where these pathologists are coming from. We operate a large-scale anatomic pathology laboratory at PathAI Diagnostics. We went through a similar exercise there evaluating a myriad of solutions. The market is complex and fragmented - there are many scanner vendors, image management system vendors, and artificial intelligence vendors. However, none offer the full breadth of offerings that uniquely position an anatomic pathology laboratory to go digital and build the business case. Some offer a scanner and an image management system but a limited number of artificial intelligence applications for only very specific use cases. Others offer an image management system alone but do not have partnerships with the leading scanner vendors to drive seamless integrations. And yet others only build artificial intelligence applications - failing to deliver on the value that artificial intelligence can bring in broader workflow optimization. It’s a complex field - there’s no doubt about it.
We believe we are uniquely positioned to be that true partner to labs looking to go digital. We’ve always been a leader in algorithm development, gathering data from diverse sources, leveraging our contributor network of 550+ pathologists to annotate cases, and developing state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to build generalizable models capable of robust performance across laboratories. Over the past six years, we’ve launched almost a hundred algorithms for our biopharma and academic research partners. These algorithms span many use cases including automated quality control, tumor detection and quantification, characterization of the tumor and immune microenvironment, standardization of disease severity assessment, biomarker quantitation, biomarker prediction, and prediction of clinical outcomes.
With the launch of AISight Image Management SystemTM, we’ve now taken our expertise in algorithm development to create a next-generation image management system for laboratories looking to go digital. Our workflows are built with the benefits of artificial intelligence in mind and our platform leverages recent advances in software engineering, cloud computing, and advances in AI to optimize performance at scale. Imagine being able to deploy a detailed and exhaustive single-cell resolution AI-based pre-screen of each case to prioritize cases for review and downstream molecular testing. We are working towards enabling these next-gen workflows and more - an AI-first IMS is the next-gen IMS.
Our strategy has always been centered on the concept of a flywheel. Advances in translational research drive clinical trial success, which yield new therapies that are AI-enabled and digitally-driven for pathologists and patients in anatomic pathology laboratories. Real-world data from these laboratories then feeds back into refining the research questions we ask every day in pathology. We’re excited to close the loop with the launch of a product targeted at anatomic pathology laboratories, one of many exciting developments to come in the next few weeks for this customer segment and a meaningful advance in our mission of improving patient outcomes with AI-powered pathology.
1 AISight is for Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.
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