Over the past decade, Contract Research Organizations (CROs) have consumed a growing proportion of outsourced research across discovery, pre-clinical, and clinical development activities. In order to deliver efficient, high quality services, they’ve been some of the fastest adopters of digital pathology. It’s no surprise, then, as they look to take the next step in addressing dynamic challenges and deliver the next generation of differentiated solutions for their sponsors, they are also some of the most eager adopters of our solution, Concentriq® for Research. Here are the top 5 reasons that leading CROs choose Concentriq:
1) Breaking Barriers: Empowering Scientists through Real-Time Collaboration
All successful CROs know that the secret to success is close collaboration between their company and their projects’ sponsor. Concentriq for Research has native collaboration and sharing functionality that allows the seamless flow of whole slide images and associated data between CRO and sponsor.
It’s not uncommon for a CRO to need to package up hundreds, perhaps even thousands of WSIs (whole slide images), and share this with their project sponsor. Concenetriq allows pathologists to share entire projects with associated annotations at the touch of a button – instantly sharing whole projects in a split second.
2) The Power of Efficiency: Reducing Costs and Time-to-Market
With rising costs and increasing pressure to reduce the time from discovery to market, efficiency has never been more critical than it is right now. It’s how productivity, and value, are measured. Efficiency is at the heart of the design of Concentriq. Each slide loads quickly, and streamlined workflows factor the pathologist’s time at the center of the design process.
One of the most notable advantages of using Concentriq that we hear from our customers often, is the built in integration with Visiopharm, and other AI image analysis platforms. The seamless integration allows for a one click “order analysis command” for analysis.
3) Unlocking New Frontiers: Harnessing the Potential of Computational Pathology and AI
Computational pathology and the implementation of AI-powered image analysis applications are some of the biggest drivers of digital pathology adoption and utilization in the life sciences. However, how well this software is integrated into the routine research workflow is equally as important as the analytical performance of the AI itself.
Imagine this scenario… you are working on a specific study for a sponsor and you see that this specific study would benefit from some AI image analysis. Because of a poorly implemented integration, you need to download and save these images to a file on your desktop, re-upload the images to a third party site and wait for these images to be processed. You then need to download the data from your image analysis software and save these images and associated data into your servers.
The problem with that scenario is clear – your highly trained and valuable pathologist is now spending a large portion of his or her time uploading or downloading data and images.
All of the mechanics of image analysis happen behind the scenes – there is no uploading or downloading with Concentriq, you can simply “send to Visiopharm” or your analysis application of choice, and in just a few moments all your images are analyzed, with annotations automatically imported directly into Concentriq.
4) Quality at Every Step: Streamline Workflows and Catch Artifacts Early with Proscia’s Automated Quality Control
Operating a state-of-the-art digital pathology workflow with a fully integrated lab management system dramatically increases the efficiency of your lab. However, with a lab that processes thousands of slides a year, there will always be a small percentage of errors. Most labs that we speak to see an error rate of between 8-15% on scanned slides which can cause significant disruptions to your workflow. These errors include tissue folds, air bubbles or even just an out-of-focus scan.
Often, pathologists need to hold off on reviewing a series of images due to one image requiring a rescan. Or worse, an image can be sent to a pathologist who wastes precious time reviewing a WSI before needing to order a complete rescan.
With the addition of Proscia’s Automated QC functionality in your workflow, most artifacts can be highlighted before even entering the pathologist’s workflow (Figure 3). Concentriq for Research will then reorder the rescan automatically without any manual intervention being required. This automated process can increase your labs efficiency and allow you to scale up the volume of work you do without needing to recruit additional resources.
5) Revolutionizing Recruitment: Unlock the Global Talent Pool with Web-Based Digital Pathology
Labs have historically been limited to recruiting pathologists in close vicinity to their geographic location. This is an obvious limiting factor for many businesses and significantly reduces the potential pool of talent. However, with a web-based digital pathology platform, pathologists can operate from anywhere in the world.
Given the growing deficit of pathologists to address a rising workload, access to talent is a game changer for many teams. In 2018 The Royal College of Pathologists cited that for every 100 pathologists retiring, only 80 young pathologists were completing training. This is a 20% reduction that will eventually lead to a chronic shortage of pathologists in the market (1).
Many CRO’s have witnessed this trend over recent years and are incorporating innovative, tech-enabled digital pathology environments, not only because they can recruit from further afield and across many specialty areas, but also because up and coming pathologists are far more likely to want to work in a sophisticated high tech pathology lab.
Future-Proof Your Business!
It’s no secret that the digital pathology world is evolving fast, in fact very fast. Exciting advances in domains like spatial biology and the consumerization of new technologies like generative AI are reshaping the key drivers of R&D. A solution like Concentriq for Research can be the competitive differentiator for your CRO, allowing you to serve your sponsors confidently as you scale your business to new heights. Find out more about how we support CROs.
(1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2374289521002098?via%3Dihub
