Ibex Medical Analytics, an Israel-based artificial intelligence (AI) and digital pathology company, has partnered with Alverno Laboratories to continue roll out of its platform in the U.S. market.
The Israeli firm is one of several companies in the digital pathology space such as Paige.ai, PathAI, Proscia and others, using artificial intelligence – image recognition and machine learning – to improve diagnosis and ongoing care for cancer patients. In a time when qualified and experienced pathologists are in high demand, AI has the potential to speed up and improve the accuracy of cancer diagnosis and give better predictions about patient prognoses.
Ibex’s platform, known as Galen, has a CE mark for use in detection of prostate and breast cancer in the EU, and in June was granted Breakthrough Device Designation by the FDA, allowing clinical review and regulatory approval of its platform to be fast tracked.
Following the raising of a $38 million Series B round in March this year, Ibex began rolling out its technology in the U.S. in earnest. The partnership with Alverno, which owns and runs 32 hospital laboratories around the country as well as supporting others, will help Ibex broaden its U.S. reach.
Alverno will deploy the Galen platform across its laboratories to aid breast and prostate cancer diagnosis as part of the partnership, the financial details of which are undisclosed. The U.S. laboratory provider is one of the largest in the country and across its labs consults on 150,000 histological cases each year, translating to more than 1,100,000 slides of human tissue.
Alverno was one of the first laboratory service providers to start using digital pathology solutions in its labs in 2019 when it implemented Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution. The addition of the Galen platform will broaden its digital offering to pathologists.
“Adopting Ibex’s artificial intelligence solutions and embedding them into our diagnostic pathway will help pathologists, whose numbers are decreasing nationwide leading to an increased workload, focus on more complicated cancer diagnoses that need a trained eye,” said Sam Terese, Alverno CEO.
“AI is an ideal ‘digital assistant’ supporting pathologists diagnosing routine cases, and this AI deployment is part of our continued journey to find the most innovative products that make our patients healthier and enhance how our medical professionals work.”
Ibex’s technology currently has a focus on breast and prostate cancer and is designed to extract useful diagnostic information from pathology slides and images to help clinicians and pathologists with diagnosis. It can also be run concurrently with normal practice as a type of quality control, flagging any slides that need extra attention or that may have been misdiagnosed.
The Israeli company already has a similar partnership with Unilabs, an international diagnostics firm, to roll out its platform in diagnostic labs across Europe. It has also partnered with various firms also working in the digital pathology and AI space to work on joint or combined solutions such as Royal Phillips in the Netherlands and Proscia and Indica Labs in the U.S.
