Philips collaborates to accelerate adoption of AI-powered digital pathology

Digital & Innovation: Philips, a global leader in health technology, announced a strategic collaboration with a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), to jointly promote their digital pathology and AI solutions to hospitals, health networks and pathology labs worldwide.

The combination of Philips digital pathology solution (Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution) and Ibex’s Medical Analytics’ Galen AI-powered cancer diagnostics platform, currently in clinical use in Europe and the Middle East, empowers pathologists to generate objective, reproducible results, increase diagnostic confidence, and enable the productivity and efficiency improvements needed to cope with ever-increasing demand for pathology-based diagnostics. 

This announcement marks the latest extension to Philips’ AI-enabled Precision Diagnosis solutions portfolio, which leverages Philips and third-party AI solutions to deliver cutting-edge clinical decision support and optimised workflows that enable healthcare providers to deliver on the Quadruple Aim of better patient outcomes, improved patient and staff experiences, and lower cost of care. 

“Building on our strong portfolio to support clinical decision-making in oncology, we bring together the power of imaging, pathology, genomics and longitudinal data with insights from artificial intelligence (AI) to help empower clinicians to deliver clear care pathways with predictable outcomes for every patient,” said Kees Wesdorp, Chief Business Leader, Precision Diagnosis at Philips. “By teaming with Ibex to incorporate their AI into our Digital Pathology Solutions, we’re further able to provide a continuous pathway, where critical patient data is made visible to both pathologists and oncologists to help improve the clinician experience and patient outcomes.”

The trend towards centralised pathology labs, the global shortage of trained pathologists, and increasing demands on histopathology posed by the growing number of cancer patients, leads pathology labs to actively seek efficiency-enhancing solutions that enable to maintain high accuracy levels.

“Pathology is transforming at an increasing pace and AI is one of the major drivers, supporting a more rapid and accurate cancer diagnosis,” said Joseph Mossel, CEO and Co-founder of Ibex Medical Analytics. “By joining forces with Philips, the leader in digital pathology deployments, we can offer new end-to-end solutions enabling pathologists to implement integrated, AI-powered workflows across a broader segment of the diagnostic pathway, improving the quality of patient care and strengthening the business case for digitisation.”

Ibex’s Galen platform adds AI-powered cancer detection, case prioritization, grading and other productivity-enhancing insights. Users have reported significant improvements in diagnostic efficiency, with 27% reduction in time-to-diagnosis compared to conventional microscope viewing, 1- to 2-day reductions in total turnaround time, and 37% productivity gain.

In addition to cancer, the AI platform supports pathologists in the accurate grading, as well as detection and diagnosis of multiple clinical features, such as tumour size, perineural invasion, high-grade PIN (Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia) and more. The accuracy level of Galen Prostate for cancer detection was the highest level reported in the field, with a sensitivity rate of 98.46%, specificity of 97.33% and an AUC of 0.99. When used as an automated ‘second read,’ the platform alerts pathologists when discrepancies between their diagnosis and the AI algorithm’s findings are detected, providing a safety net against error or misdiagnosis, previously reported as high as 12%, and increasing overall quality of care. 

Philips’ partnership announcement with Ibex follows recent AI partnership announcements with DiA Imaging Analysis for AI-powered ultrasound applications, and AI software provider Lunit, incorporating its chest detection suite into Philips diagnostic X-ray suite. These partner solutions complement Philips own AI solutions in personal health, precision diagnosis and treatment, and connected care. 

“Building on our strong portfolio to support clinical decision-making in oncology, we bring together the power of imaging, pathology, genomics and longitudinal data with insights from artificial intelligence (AI) to help empower clinicians to deliver clear care pathways with predictable outcomes for every patient,” said Kees Wesdorp, Chief Business Leader, Precision Diagnosis at Philips.

“By teaming with Ibex to incorporate their AI into our Digital Pathology Solutions, we’re further able to provide a continuous pathway, where critical patient data is made visible to both pathologists and oncologists to help improve the clinician experience and patient outcomes,” he added.