Microsoft is collaborating with digital health company Paige to improve cancer diagnostics and patient care through the use of pathology AI, the companies announced Wednesday.
New York City-based Paige’s mission is to transform cancer diagnostics through AI and tissue pathology. It works with healthcare systems, hospitals and laboratories to digitize pathology and workflow, as well as use AI to help pathologists diagnose cancer faster. It has two approvals from the Food and Drug Administration: the Paige Platform, which allows pathologists to make a diagnosis on a digital slide, and Paige Prostate Detect, an AI application for detecting cancer in prostate samples.
Through the partnership, Microsoft will make a strategic investment in Paige to help them build AI diagnostics, said Andy Moye, CEO of Paige, adding that the investment amount is still being negotiated. Paige will use Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform, as its cloud provider for the Paige Platform. Through the Paige Platform, pathologists can take a sample of tissue from the patient, put it on a glass slide and then place it in a scanner (versus a microscope), which will then create a digital image of the sample that will help with diagnosis. The data that comes from that slide will then be stored on Azure, and customers can choose how long they want it to stay there.
“In Microsoft, we’ve really found a partner that shares our vision in how healthcare is going to be transformed … For us, the vision we talked to Microsoft about is, how do we help create the digitization of pathology? How do we ensure that these tools are being used to get better patient care, to get better patient outcomes?” Moye said in an interview.
Paige will also be a partner solution on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, which will help Paige reach more hospital and health system customers.
Additionally, Paige will have the opportunity to collaborate with Nuance, a Microsoft company, to integrate with Nuance’s Precision Imaging Network. Lastly, Paige will work with Microsoft Research on creating large scale machine learning models for oncology and pathology.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Moye said that by partnering with Microsoft, Paige hopes to reach more hospitals and health systems and ultimately more patients.
“Ultimately, for us, we measure most of our success by how many patients’ lives we have impacted,” he said. “As an example of that, with our AI applications, over 3,000 patients have been, at least in some form or fashion, impacted by the use of our AI for the last couple of years. We’d love to see that number be tens of thousands over the course of the next year or so.”
Other AI companies for digital pathology include Ibex and Indica Labs.
Photo: mikdam, Getty Images
