Fujifilm announces asset purchase agreement with Inspirata to acquire the firm digital pathology business
In Tampa, Florida-based Inspirata, Inc.'s global digital pathology business, FUJIFILM Corporation (President and CEO, Representative Director: Teiichi Goto) announced the company has entered into an asset acquisition agreement to buy the business. Inspirata's Dynamyx® digital pathology technology, staff, and clients will join Fujifilm upon the conclusion of this agreement. The inclusion of digital pathology will broaden Fujifilm's strong Synapse® Enterprise Imaging portfolio, enabling the integration of pathology data and images into an organization's electronic health record system and aiding in the streamlining of treatment for oncology patients and provider teams.
This acquisition represents Fujifilm's full-scale, global entry into the largely untapped digital pathology market, where 85% of U.S., 86% of European, and 90% of Asian healthcare organisations are still using analogue technology. Fujifilm will build on the success of its established partnership with Inspirata.
“Acquiring Inspirata’s digital pathology business allows Fujifilm to be an even stronger healthcare partner – bridging a technological gap between pathology, radiology and oncology to facilitate a more collaborative approach to care delivery across the enterprise,” says Teiichi Goto, president and CEO, representative director, FUJIFILM Corporation. “We’re thrilled to welcome Inspirata’s digital pathology experts to Fujifilm’s growing medical informatics business, along with their renowned global customer base, as together we work to drive the digitization and advancement of healthcare.”
An open, vendor-neutral, end-to-end digital pathology solution is Dynamyx. With the help of full slide images from various scanning vendors, more pathology laboratories may digitise and benefit from quicker patient results, consolidated imaging records, and corporate access to images for all doctors thanks to Dynamyx's software capabilities. It is placed in healthcare facilities that deal with huge volumes of pathological images from various lab sites, enabling them to use their preferred combination of laboratory and diagnostic technologies with full confidence in compatibility. Dynamyx is demonstrated to have one of the greatest cooperation networks in the field of digital pathology, according to a recent DeciBio article.
It will join Fujifilm's award-winning portfolio of healthcare IT solutions, Synapse Enterprise Imaging, which unifies processes, data access, and imaging throughout the healthcare system. Digital pathology will make Fujifilm's enterprise imaging portfolio, which already includes a Best in KLAS-winning VNA, Radiology PACS, and Cardiology PACS as well as an enterprise information system, cloud services, and 3D advanced visualisation, one of the most complete ones available on the market. Future Dynamyx releases will also give Fujifilm the chance to assist pharmaceutical and contract research organisations with the management of toxicity testing data for drug development.
“A $320 million global industry in 2021 projected to reach $640 million by 2025, the rising number of cancer cases and the demonstrated benefits of digital pathology are fueling significant demand and market growth in the hospital and pharmaceutical industries,” says Henry Izawa, president and CEO, FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas Corporation.
“Since launching our European partnership with Inspirata three years ago, we’ve seen great success implementing our combined technologies in several healthcare organizations, notably in the UK,” says Masa Fukumoto, managing director, FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe and senior vice president FUJIFILM Medical Systems Europe. “We've received feedback from customers anticipating digitizing pathology will be the most transformative thing they do for their practice, and we look forward to continuing our global expansion.”
Instead of employing microscopic slides to conduct software visualisation analysis of a specimen, digital pathology digitises pathology slides. Digitization is crucial in a field like pathology, which deals heavily with images and data. Benefits could include improved and more effective workflows, enhanced cooperation, remote and centralised interpretation, quicker patient results, overall cost savings, ROI, and increased diagnostic precision for pathologists, clinicians, patients, researchers, and biopharma firms alike. Several international healthcare organisations have successfully implemented these advantages thanks to Fujifilm's current relationship with Inspirata.
Each region's regulatory body has cleared and/or approved Dynamyx for usage in the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK. FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas Corporation will be in charge of Dynamyx technology ownership, continued development, and engineering in the United States, with licences granted to other territories. The transaction is expected to close in the early months of 2023, subject to closing conditions. The agreement's terms have not been made public.