Philips and Targos collaborate to advance digital pathology education and enhance global training

Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Kassel, Germany – Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, and Targos, a global leader in clinical biomarker services, today announced a joint initiative to enhance digital pathology education and help drive the global standardization of clinical biomarkers. Targos is embedding Philips Pathology Education Tutor [1], Philips’ pathology course and assessment creation platform, into its internationally renowned biomarker and immunology training for pathologists and oncologists. Philips’ Tutor software enables Targos to transform its traditional glass microscopy courses for HER2 and PD-L1 evaluation into a digital learning experience, expanding access to high-quality digital pathology training.

“As we seek to achieve the goal of high-quality global standardization of clinical biomarkers such as PD-L1 or multiplex immune response markers, establishing global, digital training is essential,” said Thomas Henkel, PhD, CEO, Targos. “We plan to harness the full power of the Philips Pathology Education Tutor to reach more pathologists and achieve the best learning outcomes.”

“Pathologists from all over the world participate in Targos’ training courses, which consist of clinical and biological background information about specific biomarkers and live demonstrations and assessments of biomarker-stained images. Thereby we could show that pathologist training on digital images is as effective as training on glass slides,” said Josef Rüschoff, MD, CMO, Targos.

Philips Tutor education software offers course participants high-resolution images and an innovative strategy for evaluation, which also enables them to further learn and evaluate training cases remotely after the training course. Together, Philips’ cloud-based platform will help Targos create engaging courses, training programs and assessments based on virtual slide images.

Standardized learning experience

Tutor is being used by learning institutions throughout Europe and the U.S. as labs start to move away from manual microscopy training, towards advanced education and e-learning programs using digital whole slide images.

Replacing traditional glass slides with digital teaching formats enables institutions to conserve resources, while reaching broader learning audiences and creating a more standardized learning experience. Through standardizing the experience, pathologists are able to review and share the same sets of clinical images and data, as well as directly compare and score test results and submitted annotations online.

“Advanced pathology training will help address the shortage of highly trained pathologists, who can evaluate and score new biomarkers for precision medicine development,” said Marlon Thompson, General Manager, Philips Digital Pathology Solutions. “Pathologists worldwide can benefit from Targos’ leading courses and the effective digital learning experience enabled by the Philips Pathology Education Tutor platform.”

The collaboration comes as Philips unveils Tutor version 6.0, with advanced in-slide learning features. Lectures, courses and assessments that simulate diagnostic settings can be created where users submit annotations and quantitative answers to questions directly within the virtual microscope view. The latest version also allows users to immediately restore deleted content so that course creators never lose their work.

Tutor is part of Philips’ portfolio of digital pathology solutions, which includes the award-winning Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution, Collaboration Suite, TissueMark image analytics and more. To learn more about Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution, visit this website, download the Philips IntelliSite Pathology app in the App Store and Google Play, and follow @Philips_Path.

1. Tutor is intended for educational purposes only, not for diagnostic use.

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people’s health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips generated 2017 sales of EUR 17.8 billion and employs approximately 75,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

About Targos

Targos’s core service business is to provide highly standardized development and application of clinical biomarkers for the international pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry.  The company has supported more than 300 international clinical trials since 1999, which have led to the approval of several targeted therapies and IVDs for our customers.  The expert team of on-site clinical pathologists operates in a professional environment of project management, logistics, data and quality management.  Targos also supports the introduction of new Companion Diagnostic assays into the clinical routine by performing training courses for the international standardization of biomarkers. Targos is a fully GCP-compliant central laboratory that is inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Targos Molecular Pathology GmbH is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA).