Digital Pathology Evergreen! Why Over 1,000 High-End Clients Choose Danjier?
Serving over 1,000 high-end clients, including premium hospitals, leading research institutes, third-party clinical testing centers, biological reagent companies, and pharmaceutical firms, the company has achieved sustained and substantial revenue growth from 2015 to the present, with a remarkable 30% revenue growth rate in 2021. This is the answer sheet delivered by Danjier after 23 years in China’s digital pathology industry.
Founded in 1999, Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. operates a portfolio of brands including the Hungarian digital pathology brand 3DHISTECH, the Danish pathology image analysis company VISIOPHARM (Weishi Zhineng), the Italian provider of high-quality conventional pathology products DIAPATH, the Sino-Hungarian joint venture brand Siruidi Digital Healthcare, and the domestic brand WINMEDIC. With extensive experience in China’s digital pathology market, the company is a leader in the high-end and research-oriented segments.
Over the years, China’s digital pathology industry has undergone significant transformations, with substantial changes in product functionality and form compared to earlier stages. Nevertheless, Danjier has consistently maintained strong vitality, meeting customers’ evolving needs for digital pathology solutions at different stages of procurement. VCBeat spoke with Mr. Guan Yumeng, Executive Deputy General Manager of Danjier, to explore how the company has won the favor of clients across numerous sectors through high-performance products and long-term strategic planning.
The digital pathology industry in China emerged around 2010, experienced rapid growth in 2015, and is currently in a period of prosperity. Hospital demand for digital pathology products has varied significantly across different periods. Guan Yumeng stated, “Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. has grown alongside China’s digital pathology sector, adhering to a long-termism philosophy. Its products have been present in the market at every stage of digital pathology development.”
2007–2013 marked the early stages of digital pathology.Remote Consultation for Challenging Pathology Slides Is the Primary Use Case, hospitals have low awareness of high-end digital pathology systems, with only a few tertiary hospitals making purchases. Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. is one of the first companies to provide hospitals with digital pathology slide scanning, remote consultation, and database management software systems.
Around 2015, with increasing awareness and emphasis on digital pathology among policymakers and hospitals, coupled with greater institutional investment, digital pathology entered a period of rapid development.Hospitals’ demand for digital pathology products has expanded from remote consultations to the digital scanning of typical and challenging pathology slides for teaching and research analysis.In response to the evolving needs of hospitals, Danjier has also launched auxiliary analysis software for teaching and scientific research.
Since 2017, with the wave of domestication and the popularization of AI and big data, AI pathology has emerged. The clinical demand has expanded to AI-assisted pathological diagnosis, and more digital pathology manufacturers have begun to actively participate in the construction of AI pathology.Danjier has also actively engaged in the layout of domestic R&D and the field of AI pathology, incubating the Chinese digital pathology brand Zhiying Medical.
“AI pathology products enter hospitals through sales models, technical services, or even leasing arrangements. Therefore, AI pathology manufacturers need to partner with digital pathology scanner vendors that offer high cost-performance ratios. Zhiying Medical’s product quality benchmarks against imported brands while offering significant cost advantages, making it the preferred partner for multiple AI pathology companies.”
Zhiying Medical Digital Pathology Solutions
From 2019 to the present, the pathology department has been in the stage of full digitalization. The full digitalization of the pathology department is a component of smart hospitals, mainly including two parts,First, conventional microscopic diagnosis has been completely replaced by digital slide reading; second, intelligent systems have been integrated into pathological diagnosis.An increasing number of hospitals are establishing fully digital pathology departments, driving vendors to continuously refine their digital pathology product portfolios.
In a fully digital pathology department, hospital pathology operations exhibit four key characteristics: First, hospitals need to convert slide information into digital data more rapidly, leading to a significant increase in demand for digital pathology slide scanners. Second, leveraging full digitization enables subspecialty allocation, allowing pathologists to focus on their areas of expertise and thereby improving diagnostic efficiency. Third, pathology data storage shifts from physical slides to cloud-based storage, facilitating AI-driven pathology. Fourth, pathologists are liberated from traditional constraints, enabling them to perform pathological diagnoses anytime and anywhere via mobile devices such as smartphones.
Applications of Digital Pathology
Overall, in the era of fully digital pathology, hospitals have naturally raised higher expectations for digital pathology vendors, including requirements for product stability and comprehensive portfolio completeness. It is reported that most domestic companies are concentrated on single segments such as digital slide scanning, while very few enterprises are capable of providing complete, fully digital pathology solutions, with Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. being a representative example.One-stop fully digital pathology solutions have become the core advantage of Danjier.
“Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. rapidly upgraded and iterated its solutions to address the surging demand for full digitalization in hospital pathology departments,” Guan Yumeng told VCBeat.
For instance, to meet timeliness requirements, Danjier has resolved the technical interface issues between pathological slide preparation and digital slide scanning, eliminating the need for manual import; slides can be directly loaded into digital scanning equipment after staining and mounting. To address the needs of full-process digitization and smart pathology, Danjier has developed a broader range of supporting software products, such as Pathology Information Management Systems, Full-Process Pathology Management and Quality Control Systems, Medical Image Transmission and Consultation Systems, Slide Library Management Systems, and Virtual Simulation Teaching Systems for Medical Morphology.
It should also be noted that large Grade A tertiary hospitals process over 5,000 specimens daily, requiring prolonged high-load operation; thereforeThe stability of digital pathology slide scanners is a crucial prerequisite for achieving full digitization in pathology.Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. has introduced 3DHISTECH, which boasts over two decades of expertise in the digital pathology industry. Its digital pathology slide scanners are characterized by high stability, low failure rates, and superior image quality, making them well-suited for high-throughput operations and serving as a critical enabler for pathology departments to achieve full digitalization.
Now, Danjier has established an end-to-end workflow, forming a comprehensive fully digital pathology solution that encompasses registration, embedding, slide preparation, digital scanning, storage, slide review, and reporting.
Among them,In the manufacturing process, Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. introduced Italy's DIAPATH system, achieving full-process automation and standardization of pathological slide preparation, including tissue processing, embedding, sectioning, staining, and mounting.
In the slide scanning phaseJinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. has introduced 3DHISTECH and incubated the domestic brand Zhiying Medical, offering digital slide scanners in various models, throughput capacities, and price ranges. These scanners feature brightfield scanning, fluorescence scanning, and FISH image scanning capabilities, thereby meeting the diverse needs of hospitals at different levels.
Digital Diagnostic Process, Danjier leverages its information management system and ultra-high-resolution image quality to assist physicians in digital film reading and diagnosis;Storage phase,Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. partners with major domestic cloud storage companies to upload all slices to cloud storage.
Danjier Provides Fully Digital Solutions for Pathology Departments
Currently, Danjier serves hundreds of hospitals, primarily tertiary Grade A hospitals, including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Peking University Cancer Hospital, Peking University First Hospital, Fuwai Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing Anzhen Hospital Capital Medical University, Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital Tsinghua University, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Queen Mary Hospital (Hong Kong), Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Zhongshan Hospital Fudan University, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Southwest Hospital Army Medical University, Xiangya Hospital, and The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, among many other tertiary Grade A hospitals. Its digital pathology products hold a leading market share in high-end hospitals, and the company has participated in the construction of fully digital pathology departments at multiple institutions, including Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital Shanghai, and Zhongshan City People's Hospital.
Recently, Danjier’s digital pathology system is about to complete installation at Zhongshan People’s Hospital. The hospital is building a fully digital, intelligent pathology department, for which Danjier has customized a comprehensive all-digital pathology solution encompassing digital diagnosis and digital slide review. Multiple models of digital scanners are offered for customer selection, meeting the needs for brightfield scanning, fluorescence scanning, and FISH image scanning.
In addition to hundreds of hospitals, Danjier also serves more than 100 third-party clinical testing centers, biological reagent R&D enterprises, pharmaceutical companies, and CROs, including Dian Diagnostics, Adicon, Huayinkang Medical, Abcam, CrownBio, and Wuhan Servicebio.
“In the digital pathology industry, enterprises capable of serving multiple customer segments simultaneously are few and far between, as the requirements for digital pathology products vary significantly across different types of customers.”
For clinical systems, the primary requirement for digital pathology is regulatory compliance, which entails stringent qualification thresholds. In contrast, clients in research applications demand high-end, specialized solutions. Guan Yumeng noted that over 50% of research clients require advanced functionalities such as fluorescence scanning and quantitative analysis, making Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd.’s digital slide scanners the ideal choice.
Furthermore,Research clients have strong demand for digital pathology image analysis software.Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. has introduced VISIOPHARM’s full suite of AI-powered digital pathology quantitative analysis software, enabling clients to leverage deep applications of digitized images. The software platform features an Author module based on artificial intelligence and deep learning, which allows users to train and create personalized analysis APP modules for customized functionality. Additionally, it includes over 120 ready-to-use, pre-trained AI APP modules. Categorized by disease type, the platform offers more than 150 analysis modules, meeting the personalized analytical needs across various biological and medical fields.
In the fields of third-party technical services and biotechnology companies, the demand for digital pathology products centers on high-quality imaging and comprehensive slide data analysis solutions. In this market, Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. has collaborated with Wuhan Servicebio Technology Co., Ltd. for seven years, with nearly 50 units installed solely in the laboratories of Servicebio’s branch offices across China.
Guan Yumeng stated, “The key to Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd.’s ability to serve a diverse range of customer segments lies in its product diversification and the deepening of individual product applications.“It can be said that Danjier is able to provide a rich, comprehensive, and high-performance suite of digital pathology products to top-tier Grade A tertiary hospitals, primary care facilities, research institutes, third-party clinical laboratories, and technical service enterprises.”
Danjier is continuously strengthening its efforts in product diversification and deepening. For instance, in 2020, Danjier established a joint venture with 3DHISTECH in China—Shandong Siruidi Medical Technology Co., Ltd.—to explore the localization of international technologies in China. Against the backdrop of policy support for domestic brands and the rise of AI-driven pathology, Danjier has incubated Zhiying Medicine.
Guan Yumeng assessed: “In the future, hospitals’ demand for digital pathology products will mainly manifest in two aspects: first, leveraging more AI technologies to enhance pathological work efficiency; second, migrating pathological diagnosis to the cloud. Future demands from customers in scientific research and university education will be reflected in more refined and in-depth applications.” Moving forward, Jinan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd. will rely on its precise grasp of the development pulse of China’s digital pathology industry, pursue a dual-track strategy of independent R&D and importation, implement diversified and in-depth product layout, establish itself as a provider of comprehensive integrated digital pathology solutions, and promote and lead the high-quality, rapid development of the pathology industry.