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Geneva, 30 March 2022: Unilabs, the leading diagnostic services provider, has signed an agreement with Mindpeak, an AI solutions provider for digital pathology. Mindpeak’s AI technology will speed up breast cancer screening and make it more accurate.

“At Unilabs, we are continuously improving the quality and efficiency of our diagnostics capabilities by investing in the best available technology,” said Unilabs Chief Medical and Operations Officer Dr Christian Rebhan. “This development will transform the way pathologists work and will allow us to better serve our customers.”

The deployment has started at Unilabs St Göran’s lab in Stockholm, with the first cases read. The technology will be progressively rolled out in other parts of Sweden before being deployed in other Unilabs’ countries.

Diagnosing breast cancer involves the detection and quantification of immunohistochemically stained breast tumour cells, a critical task that is currently done manually, and takes a lot of time. Mindpeak AI helps pathologists count these cells, cutting reporting time by an estimated 60% and ensuring results can be reproduced to the same quality on every occasion.

One of the most critical factors with breast cancer is time. For patients, the integration of Mindpeak means faster diagnosis. And of course the sooner the treatment can begin, the better the prognosis.

“We are very pleased that Unilabs, one of the world’s largest diagnostics groups, chose our state-of-the-art AI-based diagnostic tools. Deep workflow integration of our AI tools will deliver significant efficiency gains and ultimately save lives,” said Felix Faber, CEO of Mindpeak.

Media contact:

Alistair Hammond, Director of Communications

e: Alistair.Hammond@Unilabs.com

t: +44 771 773 0441

About Unilabs

Unilabs is one of Europe’s largest diagnostics companies, offering a complete range of laboratory, pathology, and imaging services to patients all around the world. A leading digital champion covering the full diagnostic spectrum, Unilabs’ 12,000+ employees save lives every day.

Unilabs invests heavily in technology, equipment, and people, using digital technologies across its state-of-the-art laboratories and imaging institutes to improve the lives of close to 100 million people every year.

About Mindpeak 

Mindpeak, founded by Felix Faber and Dr. Tobias Lang, has been developing image analysis software for pathologists based on artificial intelligence since 2018. Partnering with several international laboratories and leading pathology service providers, Mindpeak is continuously expanding its product range and developing it into an indispensable component of digitized pathology workflows with focus on aiding pathologists in primary diagnostics (first read).

Mindpeak’s AI tools work out-of-the-box with real-life image variability and are already integrated into a large and growing number of workflow platforms allowing for a seamless user experience in daily routine.

The Unilabs AI Centre of Excellence, managed by the leading teleradiology provider TMC, has appointed Prof. Erik Ranschaert as Radiology AI Solutions Advisor. Ranschaert joins the Unilabs AI Centre of Excellence as an external consultant.

Ranschaert is Visiting Professor of Radiology at the University of Ghent, former President of the European Society of Medical Imaging Informatics (EuSoMII), and former Chairman of the. ESR e-Health and Informatics Subcommittee.

“We are very excited to welcome Erik to the team. His support will super-charge our efforts to continue to implement AI solutions and futureproof our radiology business,” said Henrik Agrell, CEO of TMC, the Unilabs company leading the AI Centre of Excellence. “His academic experience in this area is strong, and he also has a unique hands-on perspective, which is of great value to move AI solutions off the drawing board and into real clinical practice.”

Prof. Erik Ranschaert is a radiologist and expert in the healthcare and imaging informatics area. His specialties include digital networking and implementation of AI-based applications. He was also one of the pioneers in the field of teleradiology in Europe.

“AI is very much here to stay, and is already helping radiologists to provide more accurate and timely services, thereby increasing their value in the pathway of diagnosis and treatment of patients,” said Prof. Erik Ranschaert. “I am delighted to join Unilabs and TMC, one of the world leaders in telemedicine, to share my expertise and help drive progress.”      

Media contacts:

Xenia Wierzbicki, Communications Manager

e: xwierzbicki@telemedicineclinic.com  

About TMC

TMC, part of Unilabs, is a leading European provider of high-quality teleradiology services, with clients in Scandinavia, the UK, and Germany. In 2021, TMC supported more than 145 hospitals delivering sub-specialist elective and emergency services 24/7.

About Unilabs

Unilabs is one of Europe’s largest diagnostics companies, offering a complete range of laboratory, pathology, and imaging services to patients all around the world. A leading digital champion covering the full diagnostic spectrum, Unilabs’ 12,000+ employees save lives every day.

Unilabs is fully engaged in the fight against Covid-19 – investing heavily in technology, equipment, and people to deliver fast, reliable Covid-19 tests. Using dedicated new labs in Portugal, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the UAE, Unilabs’ capacity is more than 750,000 Covid-19 tests per week.

About Unilabs AI Centre of Excellence

Unilabs AI Centre of Excellence ensures the best AI solutions in the market for radiology and pathology are rigorously evaluated and implemented providing they have a positive impact on quality and efficiency. By being an early adopter of the advantages AI can offer, Unilabs will continue to be the provider of choice for radiology and pathology services.

Geneva, 26 April 2021: Unilabs, the leading European diagnostic group, has hit a key milestone in its fight against Covid-19, passing the 10 million Covid-19 test mark. “Since December last year, we have doubled our Covid-19 test volumes – a remarkable achievement for our front-line teams across our seventeen countries,” said Dr Christian Rebhan, Unilabs’ Chief Medical and Operations Officer. “As the vaccines are rolled out and the world prepares to open up again, testing remains crucial to quickly identifying and containing the virus wherever it turns up.”

“Our teams have put their heart and soul into delivering this success, working tirelessly to ramp up capacity, secure supplies, take samples from our patients, and deliver accurate results as quickly as possible,” said Timóteo Guimarães, who runs Unilabs’ Covid-19 business unit. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, TMC and Unilabs have actively been doing their part in fighting the pandemic. Due to the high demand in times of Covid-19, healthcare systems have come under increasing pressure and many institutions have relied on external providers like TMC to take pressure off the overloaded system and continue to provide high-quality care.

TMC has contributed to the diagnosis of Covid-related pneumonia, and vaccine-related complications since the beginning of the pandemic. Chest radiologists also see an increasing number of radiological chest examinations of patients with long-term Covid effects, such as persistent pathological patterns in the lung tissue. Since the start of the pandemic, TMC’s parent Unilabs has hugely increased both sampling and testing capacity. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, and with dedicated new labs in Portugal, the Netherlands, UK and the UAE, the current capacity at Unilabs exceeds 500,000 tests per week and rising.

The bulk of the tests are PCR tests. Unilabs also offers rapid antigen tests, as well as serology tests, which provide insight into the level of antibodies in a patient’s bloodstream, and thus the patients’ immune response to the virus. Demand for serology tests is rising as more people get vaccinated, since these tests can evaluate the patient’s individual reaction to the vaccine.

Unilabs has also introduced innovative new techniques and technologies to improve, speed up, and broaden testing. This includes tests that specifically identify variants such as the UK or South African variant, as well as new kinds of tests such as saliva or gargling tests.

To minimise risks for patients and staff, Unilabs has also created innovative workflows, setting up more than two hundred drive- and walk-throughs. Unilabs also carries out some Covid-19 sampling at its roughly 1,000 regular collection centres. At the same time, it has introduced dedicated zones to allow vulnerable non-Covid patients – such as the elderly and the immunosuppressed – to continue routine testing for other conditions.

Telemedicine Clinic, in Partnership with Alliance Medical and Doncaster Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), has started providing reporting services for low dose CT scans as part of the UK NHS’s Targeted National Lung Health Check programme.

The project in Doncaster is part of a wider UK pilot designed to improve the nation’s lung health by catching cancers at an earlier stage. Whenever appropriate, patients will be offered low dose CT scans. The report from these scans will be completed using specialist TMC chest radiologists accredited by the British Society of Thoracic Imaging.

“Finding cancer early is crucial to surviving it – the earlier the diagnosis, the better the outcome and the more chance there is for recovery,” said Gareth Davies, TMC’s UK Medical Director. “TMC are delighted to have been chosen to support this project – utilising our UK and European network of qualified specialist radiologists, and in conjunction with the best AI software, we are able to deliver a service that will literally help save lives.”

“TMC have already shown they can adapt and be flexible with the CCG in the time they’ve been on board,” said Dr Jason Page, Clinical Director for the project. “The ability to have a partner who can bring advanced Artificial intelligence at the outset of the project is a great benefit to the residents of Doncaster who will be involved in Lung Health Checks.”

The Doncaster Lung Health Check Programme and others like it across the UK are designed to rule out lung disease and to detect cancer at an earlier stage, which hugely increases the chance of survival. The reporting uses industry-leading Artificial Intelligence from Aidence. In their reporting, radiologists will use Aidence’s AI solution Veye Chest to identify and manage any suspected lung nodules.

“We are honoured to team up with one of the leading teleradiology companies in the UK and the EU in a programme which we are confident will improve people’s lives,” said Mark-Jan Harte, Aidence co-founder and CEO.