GE Medical Partners with UPMC in Pathology Imaging Venture

GE Medical and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) are launching a pathology imaging business (see: GE, Pittsburgh hospital establish imaging business). Below is an excerpt from the article:

General Electric Co....is investing $20 million in technology that will allow doctors to share and transmit images of microscopic human tissue....GE Healthcare and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are each putting up $20 million to establish Omnyx LLC, a business to develop and commercialize technology allowing doctors to store and display on computers, digital images of human tissue from microscope slides, allowing colleagues anywhere to participate in consultations. Jeffrey Romoff, president and chief executive of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said the deal "puts together the people — GE — that know the technology and the market with us, who know the science and the patient care."... "Pathology imaging is a natural extension that GE would likely want to get into," said Gene Cartwright, chief executive of Omnyx. ...Omnyx promises to come up with a product in about two years that will speed up scanning materials from a slide into a digital file from between two and five minutes now to about half a minute, he said.

I have published a number of previous notes about the entrepreneurship of UPMC. Dr. Mike Becich and his colleagues have also established the pathology department at UPMC as a national leader in not only pathology imaging but all of pathology informatics. From my perspective, the deployment of practical whole slide imaging systems is a key to the future success of surgical pathology.