Digital & Computational Pathology - Director of Clinical Project Management, Top 20 Pharma

A director of clinical project management at a top 20 pharma company discusses their utilization and implementation of digital pathology. This stakeholder discusses the use of digital pathology in preclinical toxicology studies and sees potential for its use in clinical trials as a secondary or exploratory endpoint. They believe that a best-in-class offering would be decentralized and adapted for use in clinical trials across multiple states and countries. The stakeholder is familiar with a variety of digital pathology vendors, such as Hamamatsu, Roche, Siemens Healthineers, and OracleBio, but expresses concerns about the cost of using these technologies for patient enrollment in clinical trials. Key market trends they identify include competition among major imaging companies for attention from pharma and traditional CROs, as well as the potential for brain diseases to be integrated into the digital pathology workflow. The stakeholder also notes that the use of digital pathology is more advanced in the U.S. compared to Europe, and predicts that Japan will lead the way in the APAC region. Pain points they discuss include the cost and time involved in screening patients for clinical trial enrollment, as well as the potential for companies to shut down their digital pathology segments if they are no longer profitable.