AI biotech company Owkin has launched its latest report, ‘State of the Nation: Opportunities and Challenges for Digital Pathology and AI Solutions’, exploring the evolving landscape of digital pathology and AI in healthcare across the United States, United Kingdom, and France.
Conducted in partnership with Censuswide, the research highlights challenges that pathologists and oncologists face around increasing workloads, complexity of diagnoses, and burnout. It also underscores the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance patient care, streamline workflows, and improve access to diagnostics amid the growing demand for personalised therapies for complex diseases like cancer.
Meriem Sefta, Chief Diagnostics Officer at Owkin, said: “When doctors are overworked, it can cause diagnostic errors, delays in reporting, and overall reductions in the quality of care. This can then negatively affect patient outcomes. Digital pathology and AI are poised to make a real difference in this context, relieving this burden on pathologists and ensuring patient care is always as effective as possible.”
State of the Nation: Opportunities and Challenges for Digital Pathology and AI Solutions reveals a number of current pain points in the diagnostic process, including issues related to operations, workload, ways of working, burnout, and stress. The report revealed that 55% of pathologists and oncologists experience high stress or burnout, with 52% citing a heavy workload as a significant burden. Nearly half (40%) even rated their mental health as neutral to poor due to their jobs.
Rising cancer incidence and the increasing complexity of diagnoses exacerbate these pressures, with many pathologists nearing retirement and fewer entering the field. Burnout and mental health issues don’t just affect healthcare professionals – it has significant implications for patients, with 35% of responses indicating that the burdens they face are detrimental to patient care. Nearly 40% said they couldn’t get pathology test results quickly enough and could not see or help as many patients as they'd like.
Digital pathology, accompanied by AI solutions, has the potential to revolutionise the field and alleviate pressure on pathologists. Encouragingly, 77% of surveyed professionals believe AI can cut test waiting times and address staffing challenges, while 74% see its potential to accelerate oncological diagnostics. Trust in AI is also growing, with 82% of pathologists expressing confidence in AI tools and 70% believing their patients are comfortable with its use.
AI-powered tools offer the potential to enhance biomarker screening, prioritize urgent cases, and provide new insights into patient outcomes and treatment responses, but survey respondents emphasized the need for clear clinical evidence and successful trials to drive adoption. Integration of AI tools is further slowed by barriers such as insufficient IT resources and infrastructure (43%), the cost of digitization and AI technology (23%), and lack of funding (23%) have slowed the adoption of digital pathology and AI solutions.
The future of pathology depends on embracing AI and digital technologies to enhance patient care and streamline workflows, as well as overcoming challenges around funding and implementation. The demand for accurate and timely pathology solutions is rapidly growing, and AI is poised to catalyse digital pathology adoption.
Owkin is at the forefront of digital pathology innovation with solutions like MSIntuit CRC and TLS Detect. This report highlights key steps to advance digital pathology and AI adoption, including standardizing imaging protocols and workflows for interoperability, enhancing accessibility with cloud-based solutions, building trust through education on AI’s capabilities, and revising reimbursement models to incentivize innovation.
On December 9th, Owkin hosted a webinar round table with expert panelists from UK, US, and France to dive into the context of the results from the survey report and unpack the state of play of digitization and integration of AI solutions into pathology workflows. A replay of the webinar and the full report can be found here.