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Aleksandra: Good morning, Puneet. It’s [6:00] AM where I am, which is Pennsylvania. When we were scheduling this podcast, it wasn’t [6:00] AM cause I was in Poland. But thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?
Puneet: Aleks, I’m doing great and thank you for making this morning so up early. I know we have been trying to catch up with a couple of free studios. Really appreciate me having you on this podcast.
Aleksandra: I am super happy to have you. So we start with you and with Crosscope, which is your company. Let’s start with you. I wanna show my listeners my Digital Pathology Trailblazers that I invite cool people who do cool stuff. So tell us a couple of words and like about your background and about some cool things that you’re doing, and also about Crosscope.
What is this company, where are you and where are you doing? And then we’re gonna dive into our topic, which is a different topic, and I’m gonna mention this in a second.
Puneet: Sounds good. So my name is Puneet. I’m the Chief Business and Marketing Office of Crosscope. I’m [00:02:29] essentially a global digital healthcare transformation professional with overall almost 20 years of experience in the healthcare digital space. Building healthcare, digital innovative solutions, making large scale transformations for providers, hospitals, and public health for global markets.
With a deep understanding for clinical workflows and healthcare spaces combined with artificial intelligence I have brought almost like 12 to 13 large scale new products to market in this journey of 20 years for myself .I’ve brought.
Aleksandra: Digital Pathology is not your first rodeo, is it?
Puneet: It is, but I’m just going to dwell into that. Like I said with this experience of almost 20 years worked in various global markets, Europe, US, Asia. Spent about 18 years with GE Healthcare in various geographies. Again, in the digital space only. So my experience in the digital technology arena advocates the idea of reinventing healthcare by adoption of new, more patient-centric approaches and bringing digitization in all aspects.
But I think this is where I think [00:03:29] Crosscope fits in very well. It is this experience and knowledge of working with global customers and global markets which has been pivotal for us to build globally scale solutions for digital pathology at Crosscope, and I think that’s one of the coolest things, which, we have been doing for quite some time.
If you ask, that’s what you answer, that’s, it’s been a pretty cool journey for us at Crosscope. I personally, and also at a, at an individual level, want to touch about 1 billion lives in the course of the professional work, which I’m involved in these last 18 years. Hopefully I’ll come close to it and maybe more than that, but that’s a little bit about myself.
And at Crosscope specifically, we want to bring I think digital transformation for pathology in general, which probably has not been using digitizing into the full lips potential now. And we are seeing big strides in that space for companies to make large scale impacts and, helping various aspects being, producing cancer burden, better quality of care for patients and so on, so forth.
Aleksandra: So what do you mean by transformation? [00:04:29] When somebody starts working with you, what do you guys do exactly and who do you work with?
Puneet: I think that’s a great question. I think for us every time the team at Crosscope and myself have started working. I think the patient is at the Centermost point of all of our conversations. How we can as a company, make an impact to their lives in a better way. And as far as transformation goes, I think, we all realize as an industry specifically for digital pathology, It’s now that, people are experimenting, people are putting their hands on this kind of technology and seeing some good, impactful results even in small capacities.
So I think when we look at transformation, we want to look at transformation in smaller pieces with a large scale impact from a large, I think, 10-year perspective because we know as we have seen in other digital transformation journeys in other clinical areas. It’s not a very short learning curve for the providers and also for organizations and OEMs who make these [00:05:29] technologies.
So I think, going with them together is something very critical. And that’s, I think, the key process of our learnings of the transformation journey for providers and also for companies like us. So I would say for us, transformation is working closely with customers, understanding their problem statement and using smart, cool, intelligent technology to solve that problem. In this case, digital pathology. And I’m sure we’ll touch base more as we move forward in, in this conversation.
Aleksandra: Yes. So who are your customers right now? Do you? Whoever you can disclose, let us know. I wanna just dive a little bit deeper. If somebody was to call you after this podcast, I want ’em to know what problems you can solve for them. So just let’s just give examples of a couple of customers and what you do for them.
Puneet: Sounds good. I think that’s another great great thing. I think the team at Crosscope helps us to motivate and also for customers to experience the change, what technology can bring. So for us, [00:06:29] customers are providers, for example, oncology focused hospitals. Those are one of our customers.
Second could be lab chain networks who are doing lab work for specialized works be it breast cancer for example, or using their labs for processing histopathology work for second referrals and second opinions and telepathologies, for example. That’s two. Third, I think even the biopharma companies are now understanding the use of technologies, so they are the third ones in terms for us. How the technology at Crosscope can be used to make impactful results in terms of assessing what they have been doing and evaluating it for better outcomes in the area of work, which they are focused. So our customers are diversified. We have hospitals, care providers, networks of hospitals, connected hospitals and lab chains put together.
So we are pretty diversified from that standpoint, and I think that’s one of one of the things which has really worked for us as a company and that team has been when we started building tech solutions in the digital pathology space. We always [00:07:29] wanted to ensure that our solutions are scalable, horizontally and vertically, both.
So no matter if a customer is wanting to go deep for a particular domain specific problem, which they want to solve, say for example, if some of our customers are doing some great, fantastic work in US and European markets for breast cancer, so we have some great tools for breast cancer using AI technology, which help them quantify and qualify the disease.
And there are some other kinds of customers who have a chain of hospitals with them and they want to have all their data on a single platform so that they can bring the use of their network of clinicians who may not be present in the same location and use the platform to bring clinical expertise, even though when they’re not physically present but part of the network.
So I think we solve or trying to solve the longitudinal problem of access and also the depth in terms of the clinical tools which are required from a specialization perspective using AI as, as one of the core [00:08:29] elements of bringing this transformation for them.
Aleksandra: Your platform is a software platform or do you also have hardware?
Puneet: No. So we are a net digital pathology vendor agnostic platform. Where we give customers the capability to put data coming from various scanners and we know it’s one of the pioneer problems. What we have been seeing till now, there are great scanner manufacturers across the world.
Adoption of standardization at an industry level is there, but it’s not as much as we ever wanted it to be. The need is always more, and I think that was one of our key observations when we started solving the problem. Most of our customers came and said, you know what? I have these data silo A and a B data silo, which comes from different spaces in our clinical environment of digital pathology only.
So they might have a scanner from an a vendor where data is managed in a different place, scanner from a B vendor coming from a different place. But at the end of the day, like I said, in the beginning of the podcast for us, so the patient is centric to it. So at then it belongs to that one patient.[00:09:29]
And we ensured when we started building it, we wanted to build a platform where data can come from almost every scanner. Customers can get a longitudinal view of data for that single patient in their course of treatment or journey when they’re part of their part of their treatment put together.
So I think that’s the platform we have built. We can take data from any scanner, give the ability for our customers to manage store and display it in a central repository. And, they can then use it irrespective of where they. Secondly, I think to the other aspect, which you said how do we use ai?
And I think once, now that we have this, I would say, huge repository of data, which now is huge because now we’ve given ability to customers to put data from multiple places. Then, we can bring AI in to bring in clinical and operational efficiency both. So I think that’s the way we want to solve some of the toughest problems in the digital pathology space. And that’s what the team at Crosscope has been working on.
Aleksandra: Okay. This is a great description.[00:10:29] So that brings me to the actual topic of this podcast is, What is not working in digital pathology? Like all my digital pathology trailblazers who are listening to this, they’re already enthusiast of digital pathology and they know that it’s not always a super smooth ride.
There are hurdles, and if you had a magic wand and you could solve any digital pathology problem, what would be the number one problem that you would solve?
Puneet: I would say that, I would maybe tweak the question a little bit. Things have started to work and to your point what’s the magic point? I think I’m a strong believer in bringing change and making it a reality for large scale transformational impacts. That’s the thought process for us and the team at Crosscope. There are more than a few things that I feel we can make a positive impact in the industry for both OEMs and providers, and if I group them.
Aleksandra: Which one is the…
Puneet: Number one. One, Yeah.
Aleksandra: Number one, the worst.
Puneet: I’m give [00:11:29] you two. I’m gonna certainly give you two certainly. Okay. So if I kind of group them in two points, I think is an holistic push for an open, inclusive, standardized solution towards digitization, workflow and integration with patient centricity as the focal point. So I think I would, again put it inclusive platform for digitization, which is open workflow oriented with integration capabilities. I think that’s number one.
Second, I think better and deeper collaborations between the clinical users and the industry . Globally, with the strong handholding from the industry for emerging markets and also for metro markets. Today, as I said, one of the things, what we have seen is when technology emerges, it’s natural.
It gets adopted in mature markets faster. But today, I think. Globally, there is a lot of appetite for clinicians to bring technology because there is so much disease burden put together. So I think OEMs need to [00:12:29] look at it from a larger engagement perspective, not only for sub divided markets which traditionally is what we have seen from an industry standpoint. So those are my two big points. Where I would want the magic wand to work.
Aleksandra: Hey Trailblazers. I love that you’re listening to the podcast here. If you ever want to have the video version of this which usually has more effects, I might be rolling my eyes, quite a lot there are some graphics, visuals, and texts on the screen. For those of you who are more visual, you can check it for free on my YouTube channel. If this is what you like more, and if not, just keep enjoying this episode right here.
Yeah, I totally agree. Very much the standardization and workflow appropriate digital pathology solutions and workflow appropriate help. The pathology workflow is more or less similar across the globe and you have to help in particular spots and this standardization, my goodness. Like, why is it [00:13:29] not done yet? I, I don’t know why like this digital pathology world still lives in the proprietary format, era and non interoperability environment, which is not the environment of a lab anymore and has not been for a long time. I don’t know if this was just. I dunno, unintentional and people just develop whatever worked best for them.
And then, we had the plethora of different formats and now we have to deal with this. Or was it a mentality of, oh no, we’re gonna lock our customers into a particular format so they have to be more loyal customer, which is something that’s not working anymore either.
Puneet: Yep. I couldn’t agree more. I think maybe just, I can make a small additional comment to your point. I think today in generally respective of the healthcare industry, people have seen benefits of technology and digitization. And you look at healthcare, you look at FinTech you will look [00:14:29] at supply chain and I think it’s a reasonably accepted fact in the world we live today that the more open you are, the more impactful and more quicker the solutions and the industry matures. Unlike the traditional, if I may call the word traditional belief that, non interoperability is a way to secure customers.
I think that the world has shifted from that paradigm a long way back, and I think even healthcare has experienced it. It’s just that digital pathology, I think not saying other clinical spaces are not complicated, it’s just that there’s too much overhead. There is large scale data, image analysis, workflows, clinical requirements global changes from a standpoint of clinical needs from an A market to a B market is far different.
So I think accommodating all of that is a process. And I think starting that process is where we are right now. And I think we have reasonably progressed in that process. And I think. The process is what is going to take us through and technology’s only going to improve, so the speed of image recognition, image [00:15:29] processing, it’s only going to bet better.
Computers are going to get better. You’re going to get results faster. We are going to get better algorithms with better sensitivity and specificity. So I think with this we should be able to make meaningful impact for a lot of people around the world.
Aleksandra: So if I had a magic wand, there would be one thing that I would solve is the, I call it the reinventing the wheel. That technology is moving super fast and there I am seeing that once at several companies, that once they are very deep in like developing their solution, they’re focusing on that and there is technology improvement going on in parallel that they’re not incorporating and they end up reinventing the wheel.
And maybe that was the, so the source of, the formats as well. Obviously you have to focus on your work. You have to focus on your tech and there’s also a certain intellectual property in what you’re doing but I would like the industry [00:16:29] to at least, follow what’s out there regarding open source, regarding new methods so that they can incorporate this immediately cuz there is need for those new, you know, before maybe you could like, publish something and nobody had to use it and it was a nice discovery.
There was never such an intersection between science and industry flowing into patient care as there is now. So my like, top problem is, okay, I see people reinventing the wheel. People, I mean, tech side of digital pathology. I’m not even a computer scientist.
So that’s one thing. And the other on my end is the, on the tech side as well. So my specialty is image analysis. So I saw it in the image analysis world where people with great uh, computer vision skills are starting to work on pathology images, and there’s a lot of catching up. [00:17:29] What are we even doing with those images regarding their content, regarding the pathology, regarding the interpretation.
So there is a basic knowledge that that needs to be provided before people start working on those images and I started taking care of this problem. I am designing a course “Pathology 101 for Image Analysis”. And so whenever that’s out, it’s gonna be an online course.
Whenever that’s out I’m gonna start promoting it. But basically this is like a little piece. From this reinventing the wheel problem that I’ve seen. And my question to you now, is there any, like a low hanging fruit? So obviously the interoperability workflow slash patient-centric help of digital pathology is a big thing.
Is there something small that you are tackling right now? So my small thing is gonna be tackling, bringing the image analysis, computer scientists up to speed with pathology. What do you guys do? What’s your low hanging fruit at the moment.
Puneet: No, I think that’s [00:18:29] also a fantastic question and I’m, the way I think myself and the team at Crosscope looks at is in twofold. One, I think. Knowing that the clinical community has seen benefits of digitization and adoption of technology in real world clinical environments. I think picking up a cue from there, there are these two aspects which we strongly believe are low hanging fruit.
So one, I think starting your digital pathology journey by bringing digitization along with consolidation of datas. I think that’s a basic step…
Aleksandra: How do you do that?
Puneet: Yeah. Today I think technology is matured. Infrastructure cost of scanners is only going down. Platforms like the ones which we have built at Crosscopes are giving customers the ability to adopt new technology at a very shorter rate.
Unlike in, if I taken us one decade back, if you go and say, I want to implement a large healthcare IT implementation system, it’s a multi-month project. Okay. Today, I think with technology and [00:19:29] providers understanding the learnings of workflow from other clinical settings. They realize, you know what, if we standardize our clinical workflows, even in small pieces, adoption can become much more faster. So I think that’s where we say starting your digitization journey.
Aleksandra: Can you standardize in small pieces, like how do you patch it altogether?
Puneet: Correct. So I think when we say standardization in small pieces now for example, take the example of just digitization itself. Okay. Today a lot of customers digitized a lot of data, but they didn’t manage it well from an archival and a tagging perspective. So it becomes digital data, which is not in a way to be intelligently used as we move.
Now that’s those, this might sound very small, but if you look at just, if you go to a, let’s say an oncology facility, a midsize oncology facility, and they’re expecting hands on experience on digital pathology. If you even bring them a good managed archive for digital slides as their first step.
Okay. [00:20:29] Forget the whole workflow. Okay. That itself is a great plus point for them to start with. Now, once they have this digital data, they can use it for teaching, they can use it for their students, they can use it for research work. So now they’ve experienced digitization. Then they start asking the next level question.
You know what? I want to integrate this into my histopathology workflow. I want a histopathology workbench. I want my histo text to put comments. When they are doing crossing, when I look at them on my screens, I should have the ability to compare all the longitudinal data of this patient in one viewer, on the viewer in one go.
And I think those are these low hanging fruits, which they’ve already started experiencing because you know the learnings from the other clinical spaces is already there. You take examples of imaging specialties, radiology, cardiology, I think they’ve seen image management is good.
It helps them in the long run. So I think that mental curve, they’ve already crossed. So I think that’s the first low hanging fruit. I think second, I think [00:21:29] also is start adopting with long term roadmap in the mind for AI technology specifically for digital pathology. We have also references from the clinical space itself that AI is working. It gives results, it helps clinicians that it makes them much more better in terms of making more informed decisions.
So I think that bias of thought, seeing does AI really work in the clinical world? I think we cross that bridge. But we are going to, we have to cross that bridge again in digital pathology. And that’s where we are saying low hanging fruit. Take a subspecialization, incorporate AI in it. Like I said, we’ve built some great AI tools at Crosscope for breast cancer. We have built great AI tools for liver cancer.
You just pick up one specialty, adopt AI for that specialty. It’s going to bring confidence in the clinical team ,the management team, and that’s how you can begin on scaling this and then eventually having a fully integrated end to end digital [00:22:29] pathology workflow.
Again, it’s a journey, but setting up small milestones.
Aleksandra: Definitely. And I like how you break it down. Okay. Start with the archive. You don’t. If you do disruption, digital pathology, disruption in the archive, it doesn’t affect your current work at all. Go do it there. Reap the benefits and experience, and then take it one step further. One step further.
Okay. That’s a great concept and.
Puneet: And I think there’s one other learning which I always believe. The experience of customers really matters, and we at Crosscope, I think strongly, and I’m sure all of us also realize it, but for us, voice of customer has been a real eye opener. Every time, we get into discussions, we build a vendor agnostic digital pathology platform at Crosscope.
We have built AI tools for breast, liver, lung, and a lot of them are in the roadmap for us on the same platform. But, when we really talk to customer, They ask us basic questions, how can I begin my digitization journey? It’s, these are core [00:23:29] questions and we believe because we are the, in one way or the other, the industry trying to make changes, but for them, I think these small questions are very equally important. Can I start digitizing in small areas then, which is scalable? Can I then bring workflow at a later step. Incorporate AI probably a couple of months later? I think those are the questions, which we were very amazed when customers asked us because, today we look at, from an industry standpoint, everybody talks ai, which is great, it’s like the top down approach.
AI is the last step for the journey in it, where it makes the impact. But there are so many baby steps before this workflow digitization. What process do we need to change their settings in the lab? Quality control put together. How am I going to manage management of data? All of that are small pieces, but very critical for customers.
And I think that has been one of our great learnings, talking to customers across the world. Stating, you know what? Tell us the small step. I am willing to embark on this journey with you, and we’ll probably get to a fully integrated digital [00:24:29] pathology workflow in our short journey as we move forward.
Aleksandra: So, if somebody wanted to hear about your customer’s experience with you, who do they call? Can you name a customer or two that you’re working with.
Puneet: We have a bunch of customers. We have a bunch of customers in various parts of the world. We have for somebody, for example, APHP France. It’s a breast clinic in central Europe. It’s one of the largest breast clinics in Central Europe, based out of France. We have some customers in US.
We have also customers in. Which are doing great work in oncology liver. A lot of our, a lot of our content is also on the company website where customers have told us what they feel about us and how they, our technology is helping them. There’s a bunch of them. I, it’s not that I don’t want to take names of customers. They have been great supporters of Crosscope. It’s just that I can’t take names, all of them, and I don’t want to make somebody feel left out. That’s the only…
Aleksandra: That is totally fine. I’m gonna link the your website in the show notes and in the description. So everybody who’s interested in working with you and learning more about Crosscope and you guys can go and [00:25:29] check the link below. Thank you so much for your time, for need. I like the discussion a lot and there is still so much to do in digital pathology.
Puneet: I agree Aleks, and thank you again for this opportunity and I think a lot of it was extemporary in terms of what we spoke, but, which is great. That’s the whole idea about it. I hope your audience like it .Happy to have speaking with you and it’s a shared pleasure and honor.
Thank you again.
Aleksandra: Thank you and have a great day,
Puneet: You too.
