Royal Philips has paired up with Mount Sinai Health System, New York, NY, to develop a state-of-the-art digital image repository of patient tissue samples and data analytics.

The collaboration seeks to identify new tissue-based tests and unlock pathology data, with the ultimate goal of advancing clinical research and improving care for complex diseases such as cancer.

On seven hospital campuses serving approximately 170,000 inpatients and 2.6 million outpatients annually, the Mount Sinai Health System has stored hundreds of thousands of tissue samples in the form of glass tissue slides. With Philips’ assistance, the system will begin to create a comprehensive image repository containing the digital scans of these glass tissue slides.

Photo Van Houten_Frans

Frans van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips

“The digitization of pathology gives us the unprecedented opportunity to access vast amounts of unlocked data and view it within the context of other images, results, and clinical information,” says Frans van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips. “It is our vision that our improved understanding of these data will help us enable better, more individualized care with greater confidence.”

Ultimately, researchers will have access to the data, which are available from whole-slide pathology images, clinical laboratory services, genetic analysis, radiology, and surgical and molecular pathology. According to the partners, the unique insights obtained will enable the development of predictive analytics to help personalize patient care.

“This collaboration with Philips has the potential to help drive a new paradigm in healthcare that includes the optimization of treatment efficacy and superior clinical outcomes,” says Carlos Cordon-Cardo, MD, PhD, chairman of the Department of Pathology at Mount Sinai. “Our ultimate goal with this initiative is to translate data into knowledge to maximize personalized patient management.”