Transforming healthcare imaging: an interview with Sectra’s CTO

When asked about current trends in the industry, Fredrik acknowledges the challenges faced by healthcare professionals and organizations, including increased workloads, and mounting financial pressures. He emphasizes digitizing pathology, and the transformative benefits to clinicians and patients, as an important focus area for many healthcare providers. With numerous health systems in the United States, Europe, and Asia implementing digital pathology solutions, the demand is increasing rapidly.

Implementing digital pathology may seem like a daunting task for a healthcare system, but Fredrik shares an encouraging perspective. By digitizing pathology, healthcare providers can realize increased efficiency through improved collaboration among multidisciplinary teams, streamlined workflows, enhanced accuracy of diagnoses, and the ability to integrate pathology data with other medical specialties. “The ROI is great and considering the move to reading from home seen in radiology, we are now able to offer pathologists a whole new level of digital work environment,” says Fredrik.

Sectra’s digital pathology solution, a part of Sectra’s enterprise imaging platform, enables the seamless incorporation of pathology images, alongside images from radiology and other specialties, in the same IT platform. The integration of digital pathology into the broader imaging landscape opens doors to integrated diagnostics, enabling more effective tumor boards and informed decision-making in complex cancer cases. With its transformative potential, digital pathology is reshaping the future of healthcare imaging and paving the way for more precise diagnoses and personalized patient care.

Fredrik also addresses the growing importance of cloud-based solutions and the widespread acceptance of cloud technology in the imaging space as a result of the massive volumes of data being produced. He highlights Sectra’s lengthy experience in delivering comprehensive enterprise imaging solutions – including digital pathology – which generates 10 times more data than radiology.

The final part of the interview discussed the role of AI in the imaging space. While AI will certainly play a crucial role in augmenting diagnostic capabilities, Fredrik emphasizes the need for end users to maintain control over the technology, stating that the human–machine partnership yields the best outcomes.

Sectra has designed Sectra Amplifier Services, an AI marketplace, to provide its customers with easy and secure access to various AI algorithms that are tightly integrated with Sectra’s diagnostic viewer. This approach has already witnessed great adoption, particularly in breast screening, where algorithms assist radiologists in decision-making and prioritization of studies.