In a new collaboration announced at RSNA 2023, in Chicago, Paige and Nuance, a Microsoft company, revealed plans to build the largest digital consultation network to connect and allow pathologists to consult with experts in leading hospitals and healthcare systems about their findings, as a way to accelerate the diagnostic process.

Combining Paige’s digital pathology solutions for helping diagnose cancer, including its FDA-cleared whole-slide image viewer FullFocus and FullFolio, with Nuance’s nationwide PowerShare network for digital image and documentation exchange, the two will facilitate medical image-sharing among 14,000 sites, alleviating time constraints, glass slide damage risks, high costs, and other external consultation challenges.

In doing so, they will scale reference centers' consultation services and streamline healthcare operations, which they expect will reduce time to diagnosis and costs for sharing pathology cases between institutions.
“The accessibility and swiftness of the digital consultation system mean that every patient, irrespective of their location, can benefit from expert opinions, ensuring optimal quality care and faster diagnoses,” said Paige CEO Andy Moye in a statement.

FullFocus is a single interface that seamlessly integrates third-party AI applications and displays images and data from various scanners and laboratory information system applications. The solution allows pathologists to view AI results in color-coded indicators to mark suspicious findings within slide trays, and uses easy-to-read AI visualizations, such as the company’s Focus of Interest indicator to show which areas on a slide are most likely to contain cancer. Slide-level results can also be accessed with one click.

FullFolio is Paige’s AI-enabled image manager, which assigns cases to pathologists and ensures they match the correct patient records. It provides real-time case status updates, AI-powered suspicious tissue indicators for workflow triage, default view customization, and early-day delivery of cases needing additional staining or testing. Additionally, its real-time bi-directional synchronization allows for seamless data exchange between pathologists and administrators, providers, tumor boards, and others.

“This digital pathology solution is an excellent and important addition to the growing portfolio of collaborative radiology, medical devices, and other solutions that harness the PowerShare network’s ubiquity, reliability, and security to support the earlier detection and treatment of disease and empower physicians to deliver high-quality care,” said Peter Durlach, corporate vice president and chief strategy officer of health and life sciences at Microsoft, in a statement.

Paige recently collaborated with Microsoft to create the world’s largest image-based, generative AI models for developing next-generation clinical applications and computational biomarkers in digital pathology and oncology. Designed with billions of parameters, the solution will help identify the subtle complexities of cancer.

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