Deciphex, a Dublin-based pathology software, and services provider announced on Thursday that it has secured $11.5M in a Series B funding round.
The round was led by ACT Venture Capital, with Charles River Laboratories, Novartis, IRRUS Investments, Nextsteps Capital, HBAN Medtech Syndicate, and other current investors participating.
How will the funding be used?
The funding will enable Deciphex to accelerate pathology diagnostics, improving productivity and patient outcomes using AI.
Donal O’Shea, Chief Executive Officer of Deciphex says, “This funding is an important milestone for the business in its ambition to use Digital Pathology and AI to network and accelerate the world’s clinical and non-clinical pathologists. At Deciphex we’re continuously working to provide better solutions for world-class pathology care and better patient outcomes.”
“The ongoing support from our long term investors along with the addition of new strategic partners reaffirms the value we are bringing to the pathology community and the ambition of our future growth plans” he adds.
What does Deciphex solve?
The pathology industry is troubled with increasing caseload and diagnostic complexity against a globally declining number of pathologists to service the workload.
Digital Pathology, seen as a great potential for productivity enhancement, has not fully delivered on that promise.
Some ROI studies have demonstrated marginally positive return on investment, with others demonstrating a negative impact on cost post-implementation.
However, the digital pathology with Artificial Intelligence (AI) will help make pathologists work more efficiently in the future and offers a solution to the pending crisis in supply/demand in pathology services.
Here’s where Deciphex plan to be at the forefront of this revolution!
Prof. Runjan Chetty, Chief Medical Officer of Deciphex says, “With the pressures confronting pathology (especially around workforce shortages and growing expertise requirements), the creative deployment of digital pathology enhanced by AI presents a great opportunity to address these issues. There is an exponential increase in the number of hospitals using or looking to use digital pathology in the last 2 to 3 years. It has moved from a theoretical possibility to a practical reality and imperative today.”
Develops digital pathology solutions
Founded by Donal O’Shea, Deciphex is an Irish-based software company focused on developing digital pathology-based solutions for clinical and research pathology.
The company is on a mission to deliver solutions that provide tangible productivity benefits to pathologists, eliminating low-level tasks so they can focus on the critical content.
A couple of years back, the company inked a strategic partnership with a global, preclinical CRO, Charles River Laboratories, International Inc. Pertaining to the co-development of AI tools to accelerate drug safety assessment.
Deciphex is also a key member of BigPicture, a major EU-funded initiative to build the world’s biggest central repository of digital pathology slides to boost the development of AI.
In Q4 2021, Deciphex launched its novel clinical diagnostics service, Diagnexia.
It is an online clinical pathology department that provides global, on-demand access to remote subspecialty clinical pathologists for primary diagnostics and secondary consult services, supporting faster case turnaround times and the highest quality of patient care.
Investors
Act Venture Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with founders starting out, and established teams scaling their growth.
John O’Sullivan, General Partner of Act Venture Capital, says, “Pathologists’ expertise is a crucial input across healthcare, from product development through to clinical delivery. Deciphex has built a platform to support and enhance Pathologists’ capability to deliver their skills at scale. Donal and the team created the product with leading Pathology groups and the adoption over the past 2 years has confirmed the capability and opportunity to re-tool the Pathology workbench.”
