Philips acquires Irish digital pathology firm PathXL

Royal Philips (NYSE:PHG) said today that it acquired an Irish digital pathology firm, PathXL, for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition of Belfast-based PathXL and its digital pathology image analysis tech is part of the Dutch conglomerate’s shift toward its healthcare business. Last month Philips sold off a 25% stake in its legacy lighting business – its last non-healthcare unit – as part of a plan to pare its operations.

CEO Frans van Houten said the digital pathology business is growing at a double-digit annual clip.

“The computer can do a much better job than the human eye, as it is much more systematic in analyzing tissues,” van Houten told Reuters. “We’re acquiring a company that has deep clinical knowledge and technology to analyze cancerous cells.”

Sales for the digital pathology business are expected to exceed “several 10s of millions” of euros this year, including the  PathXL acquisition, a spokesman told the news service. PathXL, founded in 2004, employs roughly 30 workers in the U.S. and U.K.

“With this acquisition, we are accelerating our drive to support global medical institutions in their transition to digitized pathology workflows,” digital pathology unit GM Russ Granzow said in prepared remarks. “Together with PathXL we see a unique opportunity to amplify our combined technology leadership positions. We will be able to offer an intelligent and integrated solution that fulfills many needs in computational pathology, education, workflow solutions and image analytics. These important and growing disciplines within pathology will enable a high-quality quantitative analysis of digital whole slide images.”

Licenses Visiopharm’s breast cancer software

In a separate release, Philips said it licensed breast cancer panel software algorithms from Visiopharm to use with its IntelliSite digital pathology platform.

“We are committed to empower pathologists with the best tools to fight cancer,” Granzow said in a press release. “With computational pathology we continue to innovate with the goal to improve the effectiveness and quality of cancer diagnosis.”

“Over the past 150 years, the pathologist has used a traditional microscope to diagnose cancer and other diseases,” added Visiopharm CEO Michael Grunkin. “Rapid advances in digital imaging coupled with the use of powerful new analytic methods promise to radically change the future of pathology. Combining the high image quality from Philips’ IntelliSite pathology solution with Visiopharm’s reagent agnostic diagnostic image analysis is the first step towards improving data quality in histopathology.”

($1 = €0.8837)

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