WATERLOO REGION — Huron Digital Pathology is moving one of the most important aspects of medical care — the viewing of tissue samples under a microscope to diagnose disease — out of the lab and onto computer screens.
“We are expanding, we are getting a lot more sales revenue, manufacturing is packed right now so we are expanding our facility,” said president Audil Virk.
Based in St. Jacobs, the company developed technology to file, retrieve, use and share images of tissue samples that in the past could only be viewed under a microscope in a laboratory.
It was one of three tech companies in the region that received a total of $11.7 million in loans from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario that were announced Friday.
When doctors suspect the presence of a disease, they often order a biopsy, or the removal of a small piece of tissue. The tissue sample is prepared and placed on a glass slide so it can be studied under a microscope. Pathologists are tied to the lab, the microscope and the glass slide.
New technology is changing that.
“We make scanners that image the microscope slide at the same resolution as if you are looking through a microscope, but now you can view the image on a computer screen,” said Virk.
“And it can be viewed from anywhere in the world — specialists from anywhere in the world can be taking a look at the case,” Virk added.
Huron Digital Pathology also developed software to organize such images. It is deploying a machine-learning algorithm for a dashboard of information pathologists can use to help in diagnoses.
The technology is used by Sunnybrook Hospital, Mount Sinai and University Health Network in Toronto, by Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, and in the largest project in the world for human brain imaging out of Germany.
The market for the technology is massive.
“It’s pretty cool stuff,” said Virk. “We are used all over the world now — we just on-boarded a distributor and we are selling now in India, China, Thailand.”
Pathology still uses 100-year-old technology — microscopes and glass slides. The potential market for the digitization of pathology is massive, said Virk.
When pathologists retire today, all the information they gathered during their careers is gone and not available to the public. Once that knowledge is encoded into software for image-analysis routines, the images and diagnosis can be easily shared, he explained.
“Patients can have their own images; they can get second opinions,” he said. “It is going to revolutionize pathology.”
During the past six months Huron Digital Pathology saw increasing demand for its tech as more pathologists wanted to work from home because of COVID-19.
Savvas Damaskinos, vice-president of research and technology, said Huron Digital Pathology came out of the University of Waterloo department of physics, where he used to teach.
“Then we patented the technology and the company started from that. It was incubated inside the University of Waterloo,” said Damaskinos.
Huron Digital Pathology holds a large number of patents in the US, Canada and Europe, said Damskinos.
It is the kind of tech company the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario likes to support. The agency announced Friday a $1 million loan for Huron Digital for hiring 11 new employees and increasing production to more than 100 scanners a year.
The agency also announced $1.7 million for Advanced Electrophoresis Solutions Ltd. in Cambridge. It has developed technology that analyzes protein structures and interactions. The technology is used in the development of new medications and cancer treatment. The company will use the money to produce more testing instruments and expand its sales and marketing team.
Miovision, the smart-city tech company headquartered at Catalyst137 in Kitchener, received the biggest loan at $10 million. With about 300 employees, technology deployed in 68 countries and offices in Germany, Serbia, the US and Canada, the company will use the federal loan to expand sales and marketing teams.
“We have already hired a bunch of people in sales and marketing. We doubled our team in sales and marketing,” said Kurtis McBride, Miovision’s chief executive officer.
Using Miovision’s cameras, sensors and software, city traffic engineers can better manage traffic flows.
“You used to be able to manage your intersection networks from your office, but now you are working from home,” said McBride. “Digitization of infrastructure became way more of a priority than it might have been before the pandemic, so that has driven a lot of demand for our products.”
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