Next-Gen Fully Digital Smart Pathology Pioneer Jiangfeng Bio Partners with Huawei at the 12th China Pathology Congress, Files IPO Prospectus

On April 9, 2023, the 28th Academic Conference of the Pathology Branch of the Chinese Medical Association and the 12th Chinese Pathology Annual Conference, hosted by the Chinese Medical Association and its Pathology Branch, concluded at the Fuzhou Strait International Convention and Exhibition Center in Fuzhou.

During the conference, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. partnered with Huawei to unveil the “Fully Digital Smart Pathology Solution” for the first time, showcasing its latest practical experiences and achievements. This solution offers a reference pathway to address some of the challenges currently facing the pathology industry.

Unlike the indirect reasoning employed by clinical laboratory and radiology departments, pathology, as the “doctor’s doctor,” provides definitive diagnoses through direct observation of tissue and cellular structures and pathological features. Consequently, pathological diagnosis is regarded as the “gold standard” for clinical diagnosis of the vast majority of diseases, particularly tumors. According to the latest statistics released by the National Cancer Center, China sees approximately 4.06 million new cancer cases annually. With a large and steadily growing cancer patient population, market demand for pathological diagnosis is accelerating.

However, the supply side faces numerous challenges, including the prolonged and difficult training cycle for pathologists, a shortage of registered practicing pathologists, the immense workload of manual slide review and diagnosis, severe imbalance in the distribution of pathology resources, and difficulties in improving quality control and diagnostic standards. These issues significantly impact the medical quality of clinical departments and hospitals as a whole, creating an urgent need for effective solutions to break through the development bottlenecks in the pathology diagnostics industry.

With the rapid development of technologies such as the Internet, artificial intelligence, and big data,The Era of Digital and Smart Pathology Begins.

As a key department of Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine—a top-tier Grade 3A general hospital in China integrating medical care, teaching, and scientific research—the Department of Pathology has proposed the “Trinity-One Solution.” This solution establishes medical data infrastructure as the “foundation,” leverages intelligent multi-modal data management as the “core strength,” and employs intelligent multi-modal pathological auxiliary diagnostic algorithms as the “superstructure,” offering valuable experience for the construction of digital smart pathology departments.

Professor Wang Chaofu, Director of the Department of Pathology, Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine“It was stated that ‘by implementing the Trinity-One Solution to build a digital and intelligent pathology department at Ruijin Hospital, full-process automation and digitalization can be extended to branch campuses, realizing the vision of “unmanned pathology departments” at these branches. This will help drive digital transformation in primary care hospitals, improve diagnostic capabilities, and enhance accessibility to high-quality pathological diagnostic resources for general patients.’”

Against the backdrop of low levels of informatization, digitalization, and automation, as well as standardization challenges in current hospital pathology department development, Ruijin Hospital Pathology Department’s “One Solution” model is worthy of reference and broader adoption.

As a pioneer in innovation, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has leveraged digital pathology as an entry point to build a fully digital, smart pathology closed-loop platform centered on a whole-process pathology information management system. This approach aligns with the core objectives of next-generation pathology department construction and is poised to elevate the development of pathology departments to a new level.

At this year's National Pathology Annual Conference, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. presented its comprehensive all-digital smart pathology solution to address bottlenecks in the development of digital pathology and enhance pathological diagnostic capabilities across the board.

 Customer Value of Konfoong Bio's Fully Digital Smart Pathology Solution

According toLiu Bingxian, Chairman and General Manager of Konfoong BioinformationIntroduction: This solution comprises a digital slide scanning system, a remote pathology diagnosis system, an AI-assisted pathology diagnosis system, a digital pathology storage system, and an end-to-end pathology information management system. It provides integrated digital pathology solutions and services for hospital pathology departments, third-party diagnostic centers, and cervical and breast cancer screening institutions.

ThisAn integrated hardware and software solution that streamlines pre-processing and slide preparation, digital scanning, digital slide storage, and diagnosis, precisely out of consideration for ensuring that the plan can be effectively implemented and serve clinical practice.

In terms of software, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. made its debut at the exhibitionFull-Process Pathology Information Management SystemApproved with Class II medical device certification, it enables end-to-end tracking and quality control management of pathology samples, supports integration with various pathology equipment, and facilitates the establishment of a “cross-campus, multi-center, interconnected large-scale pathology department”;Pathology AI-Assisted Diagnostic SystemIt can improve the diagnostic efficiency of pathologists, reduce their workload, and help enhance diagnostic accuracy.

In terms of hardware, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD.Digital Pathology ScannerDeployed in thousands of hospitals across China and integrated with hundreds of remote diagnostic platforms. Its full series of scanners comprises 29 product models, with digital slide support for simultaneous intra- and extra-hospital viewing, meeting diverse clinical and research needs across multiple scenarios. The remote consultation service helps alleviate the scarcity of pathological diagnostic resources in primary care hospitals.

Despite the active embrace of digitalization by pathology departments, certain practical challenges continue to hinder hospitals’ progress in building digital pathology infrastructure.

For example, pathological data storage systems have traditionally relied on object storage with high protocol overhead, leading to significant latency in access, sluggish and non-smooth image viewing, and pixelation issues, which severely impair the efficiency and accuracy of slide interpretation. The massive volume of digital whole-slide imaging data requires long-term preservation, placing substantial demands on hospital storage resources. Daily operations face potential risks related to data confidentiality, sharing, and cyberattacks. Meanwhile, secondary and tertiary hospitals at the grassroots level, which are in greatest need of digital pathology, lag behind in terms of pathological informatization and digitalization; traditional solutions involve complex and challenging IT system deployment.

To address these challenges, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has partnered with Huawei and the Department of Pathology at Ruijin Hospital to jointly develop an all-in-one digital pathology appliance. Leveraging Huawei FusionCube 500’s integrated capabilities in computing, storage, networking, AI, and security, the system incorporates a data acquisition system, pathology image review system, pathology information system, AI-assisted diagnostic system, and telepathology system. This single device delivers the full functionality of a digital pathology department that traditionally requires six separate systems. With its low procurement cost, short delivery cycle, simplified operations and maintenance, and high reliability, it serves as a powerful solution for secondary and tertiary hospitals at the grassroots level to rapidly establish digital pathology departments.

For large Grade A tertiary hospitals, Huawei offers a digital pathology solution based on OceanStor Pacific distributed storage: The system achieves a performance of retrieving 1,000 digital pathology slides within one second, an 80-fold improvement over traditional object storage. This capability supports hospital-wide access for clinical practice, scientific research, and teaching, thereby eliminating barriers to pathology slide retrieval. Additionally, Huawei’s proprietary lossless compression algorithm for pathology images saves more than 30% of storage space, significantly reducing data storage costs for hospitals and ensuring that storage expenses no longer bottleneck the development of digital pathology.

The joint exhibition by NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. and Huawei at this year’s Chinese National Pathology Annual Conference marks a new phase in their partnership, characterized by greater height, breadth, and depth.

Zhou Yuefeng, President of Huawei Data Storage Products“It was stated that Huawei possesses leading data storage technologies and has deeply cultivated the field of digital pathology, focusing on addressing the challenges of slow image retrieval and high storage costs. NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has been dedicated to the digital pathology sector for over a decade, gaining a profound understanding of full-scenario business operations in this field. The collaboration between Huawei and Konfoong Bio represents a strong alliance. Through joint exploration and research and development of advanced technologies, both parties will jointly promote the development of China’s digital pathology industry.”

Ten Years in the Making.

From unveiling the prototype of its first-generation digital pathology scanner at the Chinese Society of Pathology Annual Meeting in 2013, to pioneering a fully digital smart pathology solution in 2023, Konfoong Bioinformation has consistently remained at the forefront of independent innovation in digital pathology.

From the perspective of NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD., the future development of pathology departments will inevitably trend toward automation, informatization, digitization, and intelligence, thereby completely liberating pathologists from microscopy. This trend has been strongly validated in developed countries such as the United States and Japan, and the company’s business development path aligns precisely with this external trajectory.

From developing the hardware for slide scanning systems to digitize pathological diagnosis, enabling remote diagnosis and AI-assisted diagnosis, and creating a full-process pathology information management system integrated with quality control standards, to now integrating digital pathology storage systems to form a fully digital smart pathology solution, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has once again delivered an innovator’s answer.

Liu Bingxian, Chairman and General Manager of Konfoong Bio (left in the photo), communicates with visitors

Liu Bingxian, Chairman and General Manager of Konfoong BioinformationIt stated, “Rooted in China, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. will continue to optimize its existing solutions and persist in independent innovation and R&D, while taking the lead in establishing benchmark departments for fully digital smart pathology in top-tier hospitals across all provinces in China. The company actively advocates a new scientific concept for fully digital pathology departments and accelerates the development of the smart pathology ecosystem.”

“Embracing globalization, Konfoong Bio has established an extensive sales network in overseas markets. This year, Konfoong Bio will accelerate its international expansion to provide overseas customers with more comprehensive fully digital smart pathology solutions,” added Liu Bingxian.

It is foreseeable that, driven by the intelligent pathology ecosystem of NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD., the future of intelligent pathology is rapidly approaching.