How do you describe yourself, professionally?
I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I've been working at the intersection of software technology and healthcare since the early 2000s, driven by a passion for solving complex problems in these domains. What really motivates me is automation – making processes more efficient and reducing manual steps wherever possible.
In healthcare and life sciences, that's particularly challenging. There's so much proprietary technology, so many bottlenecks. But when you can actually automate those processes through technology, the benefits are enormous.
I'd also describe myself as a jack of all trades. On any given day at Pathcore, in my role as co-founder and CEO, I might be involved in sales, marketing, HR, product development, finance, engineering, or cloud infrastructure issues. Because I have an engineering background and spent many years as a software algorithm developer, I can get very technical when needed. But my role also requires me to have oversight of all the other areas.
I move between these worlds constantly, and I think that's perhaps the most interesting part of my job. There is incredible breadth and depth.
What led you into the medical imaging world?
During my undergraduate degree in electrical and computer engineering, I did some summer work in a lab investigating medical imaging problems. Several projects later, I ended up doing my graduate studies in the same lab, focusing on statistical signal processing applied to biometrics and medical images.
Eventually I needed a job, and graduated into a position at a cancer research institute in Toronto. The lab was heavily focused on medical imaging, specifically pathology and radiology imaging. The project I joined was called the One Millimeter Challenge – a multi-year initiative designed around early detection of cancer. The premise was simple: if you detect cancer earlier, treatment outcomes are significantly better.
It was a province-wide effort involving multiple cancer centers. Our piece of the project involved identifying novel biomarkers from in vivo imaging that could be correlated to pathologic findings. This approach would be particularly valuable in screening programs. If you can screen somebody with low-cost or non-invasive imaging – X-rays, CT, MRI, or ultrasound – and infer something about the pathology, you skip the entire biopsy process. You save the patient time and the healthcare system considerable money.
To accomplish this, I started developing a program called the Sedeen Viewer, which is still available as a free download on our website. It's 20 years old now and, by the latest count, is still being used in over 72 countries by more than 3,000 organizations.
What motivated you to move from research into establishing a commercial software business?
To be honest, research was a happy place for me, but I also became interested in translation via commercialization. Obviously, enormous amounts of money go into research around the world, and sometimes research outcomes don't directly impact patients
When our One Millimeter Challenge funding ran out, and we had to move on to other things, I decided to pursue translation and commercialization. I was deeply interested in the problem and felt I could continue that line of inquiry better outside of research. Then we could really address the actual problems without having to convince a granting body to fund a five-year-old project any longer.
I think the big issue is this: if you want to translate your research, it's very hard to do that in an academic setting. A lot of research doesn't get translated because the scientists don't have the background, the expertise, the time, or the motivation to commercialize.
Adding to the body of scientific knowledge is important but, for me, translation is the ultimate goal of research.
Was there a particular innovation that you thought would translate well into pathology practice at that time?
This was between 2006 and 2011 – the early phase of digital pathology. At the time, there were a handful of scanners on the market, very few AI tools, and very little software that could allow pathologists to make use of the data in their routine workflow. The technology was new and relatively unadopted – market penetration was very, very low.
But there was this huge opportunity. Digital pathology seemed to be the answer for many problems: workflow efficiency, pathologist shortages, consistency in interpretations, cost savings, and the ability to support remote communities that don't have pathology expertise. There was so much potential.
For me, that was the value we could bring with our expertise in digital pathology – to try to expand the user base of this technology and offer something that could actually help the pathology world.
How did you get the business off the ground initially?
Pathcore started with a couple of entrepreneurship grants – relatively small amounts, around $30,000 to $50,000 – from organizations here in Ontario like the Ontario Brain Institute and the Ontario Centers of Excellence. These are quasi-governmental organizations that fund startups and help get technologies and innovation off the ground.
The first few years were really about survival – securing various grants and small projects here and there until we had developed a compelling enough to actually go to market. We had just enough to get going. And then we got lucky. We landed a few projects at Sunnybrook Research Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and Grand Challenges Canada.
We finally launched our own branded digital pathology products around 2016, around four years after we started out.
How did your team and the business evolve over time?
Looking back, for many years we were far too focused on building technology. We relied really heavily on organic sales. That's just how it worked. The majority of our investments were focused on engineering and technology development. We just built software.
While that has allowed us to build a robust and reliable image management solution for pathology, entrepreneurship and technology innovation also requires sales, marketing and business development.
We gradually built up the team. Then around 2016, when we went to market, I was at a networking event and met a fellow Canadian, Stéphane Langevin, who had recently returned to Toronto after a career overseas. Chatting over coffee, there was an instant connection. He became our VP of Commercial Operations.
Stéphane had an extensive background in sales, marketing, and business management. He immediately jumped into action.
We packed my car and drove to Pittsburgh for our first trade show at the Digital Pathology Congress. Our flights were cancelled due to storms, so we drove all night, arrived at the hotel around 3:00 AM, and everything was closed. We found a security guard who helped us retrieve our equipment from the venue's storage area, and we set up the booth – just as the event was opening.
The event was a success. We made a couple of sales and met some customers. Shortly after, we went to Philadelphia, connected with people at Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and made a few more sales. That's how it all got started.
Our team, now, are some of the most competent, intelligent, dedicated people I've ever worked with. Some of them have been with us for many years. They've grown with the company and really shaped our technology and products. Much of our success is due to them.
What drives your approach to problem-solving in digital pathology?
When I see a problem, I just like to fix it. Because of my nature, I use technology to solve problems. I'm very interested in the technology itself – how it works, the science behind it. I like to understand all those details.
But once I have that understanding, I want to apply it to something that's actually helpful to people. It doesn't have to be a huge impact. As long as I can deliver something that someone will enjoy and find useful, that makes me happy.
From my perspective, we can develop a solution for any problem – or at the very least, we'd like to try. We don't shy away from complexity.
One advantage we have at Pathcore is that we're not venture-backed. That means we're not necessarily focused on the quickest return or the fastest growth trajectory. We can take the time to develop quality solutions. There's some slack in the system that allows us to build better products and be satisfied with what we produce.
You grow more slowly, but you have more fun along the way. And I think customers appreciate that approach as well, because it translates to robust products.
How did you become involved in developing industry standards?
When I left research. One of the major problems in digital pathology was standardization – there were so many proprietary data sources that it was very difficult to do anything across different scanners. DICOM was a potential solution that had come from the radiology community. I fairly quickly ended up joining, and eventually chairing, the DICOM Working Group 26 for Pathology.
One initiative I'm particularly proud of is the Digital Pathology Connectathons – events designed to bring all the vendors together to test DICOM interoperability. Our company blog documents the story of these connectathons from the very first event at Pathology Visions 2017.
The goal was to raise awareness and encourage vendors to adopt the DICOM standard within their products. And it worked – all the scanner companies joined fairly quickly and can now output DICOM, and most pathology viewing and analysis software can view DICOM files.
What pathology problems are you trying to solve currently?
Digital pathology and AI is complex to set up, but it should be easy to use. You shouldn’t need to be a software engineer or a cloud architect to manage the systems, and you don’t want to spend your time troubleshooting and debugging them.
My goal is to make digital workflows that are simple – maybe even fun and exciting. Pathologists should be able to view images, use AI software, and write their reports without delays and frustrations, or the need for multiple screens.
But the data also needs to be secure – free from risk of loss or hacking. Labs need a compliant data management and storage solution. But that’s expensive. So, one of the problems is how to bring that cost down so that more labs can adopt digital pathology at scale.
So, from the user's perspective, it is all about efficiency and productivity. But from the organization perspective, it's all about cost, compliance, storage, and scalability. Pathcore is addressing all those issues.
Another problem is how to leverage digital pathology for interactive e-learning in a safe environment. To solve it, we adapted the flight simulator concept from the aviation industry and translated it to a pathology diagnostic simulator for education purposes. Trainees are able to diagnose real cases in a simulated workflow that mimics their real one, increasing their confidence. Meanwhile, faculty saves time repeating the same training because they can just curate their content and make it available digitally.
What have you learned about yourself from your role as a company leader?
Patience is the main thing. Product development moves a lot slower than you might anticipate. It requires more money and time than you initially planned for, and is fraught with unexpected challenges along the way.
That investment of time is essential to addressing all the little technical bottlenecks and ensuring customer satisfaction.
The other thing I learned is to listen to and learn from our customers. You can’t just ship a product and forget it – the feedback loop has to be constant if you want satisfied customers. And you need a robust system of tracking and acting on feedback so you don’t keep making the same mistakes.
What advice would you give to scientists with entrepreneurial aspiration?
I mentioned that Pathcore didn’t raise capital to get started. The ultimate aim of bringing your products to market and impacting lives can happen more quickly if you choose that route. However, raising capital has the potential to dilute your ideas, and certainly your ownership. It can also can reduce your agility as a company.
There are pros and cons to self-funding a business. On the one hand, you retain the autonomy to make team decisions based on values rather than quarterly revenues. But on the other hand, time is money and delays increase risk. How do you quantify the cost of investment in a prolonged process that is also very risky?
Ultimately, reflecting on Pathcore's journey, I’ve enjoyed the ride, and I’m proud of what we’ve achieved.
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