Category: Press Releases

Visiopharm is very happy to announce that Ralf Huss, M.D, Ph.D. has been appointed as the chairperson of their scientific advisory board. As the new academic leader of the advisory board, he brings a wealth of scientific and industry leadership experience in digital pathology. 

Currently, Ralf Huss is a Professor of Pathology and the managing deputy director of Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics at the University Hospital in Augsburg (Germany), where he also leads the Center for Digital Medicine. He is board-certified in anatomical, experimental, and molecular pathology with more than 30 years of experience in histopathology, immunology, cancer research and oncology.

“The interplay between the scientific community and companies like Visiopharm represents an essential partnership that helps drive advances in digital pathology. In particular, the need for communication between these two worlds is evident during these extraordinary times. For my part, I am looking forward to developing an international board of advisors that ensures Visiopharm continues to lead the field with technologies and partnerships that bring value to the field.”

His advisory role will begin on May 1, 2020, and among his responsibilities will be structuring the advisory board with a particular focus on guidance in the areas of clinical pathology and quality management of pathological workflows.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to have Ralf join as chairperson of our scientific advisory board. Building a strong advisory board ensures that we maintain close ties to the community and create solutions that pathologists need. With his practical experience and connections in the digital pathology field, Ralf will be instrumental in guiding the future success of Visiopharm.”

– Michael Grunkin PhD, CEO at Visiopharm

Visiopharm is pleased to announce that Dirk Vossen Ph.D. has joined the company as its new Chief Diagnostics Officer.

Dirk brings extensive experience as a global leader in digital pathology, specialized in cancer tissue diagnostics and clinical workflows. His track record of creating value through innovation in digital and computational pathology spans the entire range of development, from ideation through validation and certification of medical devices, as well as commercialization strategies.

Based in The Netherlands, Dirk will be leading Visiopharm’s clinical diagnostics programs, with cross-functional responsibilities that support the company’s continued expansion into diagnostic and clinical applications of digital pathology.

“I have worked with Dirk as a partner, and have admired not only his deep understanding of the digital pathology market, but his innovative leadership and drive to create solutions that propel the industry forward and ultimately improve the care that cancer patients receive,” says Michael Grunkin Ph.D., CEO, and co-founder of Visiopharm. “That’s why I am delighted to welcome him to Visiopharm and look forward to his contributions as we continue on our journey to create precision pathology solutions that elevate the industry standards for diagnostic and clinical image analysis.”

As the co-founder of Philips Digital and Computational Pathology business, Dirk brings over a decade of experience in building digital pathology solutions, including the development of whole slide image scanners, image management systems, computational pathology applications as well as driving the strategies and execution of clinical programs. A key addition to the management team, Dirk will orchestrate the successful development and commercialization of clinical products that put the latest advances in tissue mining into the hands of pathologists.

“It’s an extraordinary time to join Visiopharm, with digital pathology becoming mainstream and breakthrough AI applications that will elevate the quality of data that pathologists use to make critical decisions for patients,” he said. “I am eager to be a part of this next phase of the company’s growth.”

Visiopharm and Proscia® Partner to Deliver AI-Enabled Solutions that Advance Precision Medicine

Collaboration unifies image analysis and image management in a single solution for realizing the full promise of computational pathology data

Visiopharm, the leader in precision pathology software, and Proscia, a leader in digital pathology image and workflow management, have entered into a multi-year, strategic partnership to deliver deeply integrated AI-enabled solutions that drive breakthroughs in translational research and advance precision medicine. In addition to joint product integration, Visiopharm and Proscia have established a global reseller and support agreement to accelerate the delivery of these combined offerings to the market.

The shift towards precision medicine has led to the rapid adoption of digital pathology across translational research, as new computational applications have the potential to unlock hidden insights that drive discoveries into breakthrough therapies. Despite this digitization, research organizations are struggling to incorporate computational data into the modern digital workflow due to the siloed deployment of isolated applications across image analysis and image management.

Visiopharm and Proscia have joined forces to deliver a best-in-class unified solution that enables research organizations to better leverage computational image data. Available today, the integrated solution connects Visiopharm’s VIS AI-image analysis suite with Proscia’s Concentriq® image management platform, enabling high-throughput research organizations to realize the full potential of their digital pathology data. This integration allows scientists and pathologists to automatically stream images from Concentriq into the VIS suite for analysis and push results back into Concentriq, where they can be visualized and incorporated into ongoing studies.

“We are impressed with the innovation, drive, and depth of understanding Proscia brings to the field of image, data, and workflow management,” said Visiopharm CEO Michael Grunkin. “This collaboration will allow each of our companies to focus on our respective core competences. Essentially, that means we can use our resources to keep innovating and pushing the ‘boundaries of possible’ in our respective fields and continue to deliver relevant and future-proof solutions that span the entire scope of precision pathology collaborative workflows.”

“Our strategic partnership with Visiopharm brings together industry-leading technology capabilities and a strong track record of customer success,” said David West, CEO of Proscia. “Through our joint solution, we’re helping our customers adopt an increasingly complex and data-driven approach to pathology that will drive research breakthroughs and lead to improved patient outcomes.”

To learn more about how Visiopharm and Proscia are enabling research organizations to realize the full promise of their digital pathology data, explore the partnership overview and join our webinar, “Integrated Image Analysis At Scale: Visiopharm and Proscia’s Unified Solution,” on April 14, 2020 at 1PM CET and 12PM ET.

Enabling better cancer diagnostics via artificial intelligence-driven solutions

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) and Visiopharm today announced that they have entered a long-term collaboration agreement. The announcement is happening at the USCAP 109th Annual Meeting being held on February 29 through March 5, 2020, in Los Angeles, CA.

Based on a joint vision of end-to-end quality and standardization of tissue diagnostics, the partnership will address the currently unmet needs of pathology labs around the world. The companies’ shared goal is to provide specific technologies, produ­­cts, and services that will improve the standardization of pathology labs and accelerate accurate diagnoses.

Agilent and Visiopharm will co-market Visiopharm’s portfolio of artificial intelligence-driven pathology solutions.

“This partnership is an exciting step in our shared commitment in the fight against cancer,” said Simon Østergaard, Agilent vice president and general manager of the company’s pathology group. “Agilent’s market-leading portfolio of pathology staining management solutions combined with Visiopharm’s digital interpretation solutions will help facilitate improved patient care and diagnostic accuracy. Together we will tackle some of the most critical challenges faced by pathology labs and pave the way toward the fully digitalized lab of the future.”

“The transformation into next-generation precision pathology is important to realize the full potential of tissue pathology in this dawning era of personalized medicine,” said Michael Grunkin, CEO of Visiopharm. “This transformation requires a holistic approach to standardization along the entire diagnostic journey from biopsy to diagnosis. We are excited to be working with Agilent on precisely that. With their complementary product portfolio and longstanding legacy of innovation and quality in this field, we see a very strong match.”

The co-marketing relationship will result in offerings that will improve the standardization of pathology labs and accelerate accurate diagnoses for their patients. Digital pathology is the future, although many labs have waited to adopt it due to the lack of choices currently available and the expense of adoption. This effort will enable labs to gradually adopt digital technologies in a flexible and scalable manner.

Visiopharm, the leader in AI-driven digital precision pathology and Marylou Tyler, industry leader in sales process improvement and bestselling author announce that they are entering into a long-term exclusive collaboration to implement a scalable, growth-driven sales development program.

With a history of optimizing the sales process and implementing predictable new sales opportunity engines, Marylou brings over 30 years of experience in developing effective and sustainable sales process strategies for clients such as MasterCard, Apple, Outreach.io, and Talend.

“We are extremely excited to have Marylou as a part of our organization. She brings a wealth of business experience to Visiopharm. Not only does she know the data models and understand how to scale for rapid growth in technology focused companies, but she brings a deep expertise in creating a highly successful team that can meet and exceed our business targets,” states Michael Grunkin, Visiopharm CEO.

Visiopharm’s AI-powered image analysis solutions continue to define the field of digital precision pathology and are based on almost 20 years of tissue expertise. Visiopharm is committed to propelling pathology research labs into the era of digital pathology. Not only that, but by enabling a sustainable sales process that will ensure company success, Visiopharm is poised to maximize its visibility and ensure exponential growth for the coming years.

“As a consultant, I have helped many companies over the years, but I am particularly looking forward to helping Visiopharm on their journey to bring cancer diagnostics products into the hands of those who can make a difference,” says Marylou Tyler. “Their commitment to developing truly outstanding products is inspiring and I look forward to working with the team to create an organization equipped with all the tools required to realize their outstanding growth potential.”

UK Government Invests in Visiopharm, Increasing Access to Ground-Breaking Digital Pathology in the NHS

The Danish-based leader in augmented pathology solutions Visiopharm has secured a grant worth £250,000 from UK Research and Innovation to test its innovative solutions in partnership with the NHS.

The grant, offered by the UK Government’s innovations fund, was offered specifically to boost SMEs offering support to evaluate an innovative medical technology.

Visiopharm’s winning proposal outlined a project working with multiple NHS trusts across the UK, reviewing clinical procedures and expanding their technology by allowing access to clinically approved (CE IVD) or novel AI-powered algorithms. Each NHS trust has tailored the evaluation to fit their specific challenges and needs. Through their feedback, we will shape the future applications of these algorithms and ensure the highest standards in clinical relevance for the UK market. The project in addition to clinical evaluations will also contribute to the development of new CE IVD AI-powered algorithms.

Dr. Branko Perunovic, Consultant Histopathologist and Clinical Director of Laboratory Medicine at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, who is one of the selected NHS Trusts to be working on the project, said: “We are delighted to be named as one of the NHS Trusts across the country involved in this exciting project. Our state-of-the-art laboratory complex houses some of the most advanced diagnostic equipment in Europe, and we have already been pioneering the use of digital pathology systems to the benefit patients and hospitals across the region, so we are well placed to develop this technology which, once validated, could potentially be used to improve the speed and accuracy of cancer diagnosis and treatment.”

UKRI awarded the investment to Visiopharm and the NHS on the basis of their structured and ambitious approach, backed by their already-proven technology. Visiopharm already works with a select group of NHS trusts in the UK.

“We are very excited to have been awarded this grant,” said Martin Kristensson, Senior Vice President, Sales Europe at Visiopharm, who led the project bid. “Working with the NHS provides great benefits to all of us: they have the data and know-how while we have technology solutions that can lead to the best results. This investment gives us the chance to help the NHS test novel technology risk-free, and an opportunity to develop our products in NHS working conditions.”

Reviewing the bid, the assessors noted:
“The team is well versed in the technology, having already established a foothold in other territories, and the level of co-operation with clinical NHS personnel on the project will be significant.”

The UKRI award was offered as a half-funded project, with half the fund supported by the bidder. A large percentage of the funding received is going back to the NHS to develop the project.

The project started July 1, 2019, and will run for ten months, culminating in a detailed report.