Jiangfeng Bio: Building a Smart Digital Pathology Ecosystem from Slide Scanners to AI-Driven Diagnostics

The pathology market size is on an upward trend.

According to the report from the 2020 World Congress of Pathology, the pathology market size is projected to grow from $30.3 billion in 2019 to $44.4 billion in 2024, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 6.1% from 2019 to 2024. Meanwhile, Grand View Research estimates that the global digital pathology market was valued at $767.6 million in 2019 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 11.8% through 2027.

As digital pathology rapidly advances in developed countries, a group of innovative enterprises in China have also seized the business opportunity and taken the lead in laying out the digital pathology market. NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. (hereinafter referred to as “Konfoong Bioinformation”) is one of them.

What sets apart this company, founded in 2011 and previously led by Intel with over RMB 100 million in Series B funding? How has it approached the field of digital pathology, and what insights can it offer to the industry? We spoke with Deng Liang, Marketing Director at Konfoong Bioinformation.

In China, there are currently fewer than 20,000 practicing pathologists. Based on the National Health Commission’s staffing requirement of one to two pathologists per 100 hospital beds, the shortage of pathologists exceeds 90,000. Uneven distribution of pathological resources, prolonged diagnostic turnaround times, low efficiency, and excessive workloads are among the major pain points currently facing the pathology diagnostics industry.

Digital pathology is undoubtedly a critical breakthrough for addressing the many challenges currently facing pathological diagnosis. To transform traditional physical glass slides into next-generation digital pathology slides, digital pathology scanning systems are indispensable. By combining digital imaging technology with conventional optical magnification devices, these systems convert physical slides into digital images. This not only makes slide review more convenient but also lays the foundation for remote consultations, pathology education, and the digital storage of slides.

Initially, when the founder of NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. returned from overseas and decided to start a business, he recognized the importance of digital pathology scanners as the “infrastructure” of digital pathology and chose to develop its own digital pathology scanning equipment. At that time, most digital pathology scanners on the market were imported. After three years of dedicated research and development, Jiangfeng Bio obtained product registration in 2013. Its product was certified as a “First Set of Major Technical Equipment,” becoming a cost-effective alternative to imports and enabling more primary healthcare institutions to establish digital scanning and remote consultation service systems.

Jiangfeng Bio's Digital Pathology Scanner Displayed at the Chongqing Smart China Expo

“Once primary healthcare institutions are able to make more accurate diagnoses, medical malpractice incidents can be further reduced, enabling more patients to receive care at the primary level and thereby advancing the implementation of tiered diagnosis and treatment,” pointed out Deng Liang.

Previously, when primary care hospitals encountered cases that could not be diagnosed, they had no choice but to mail specimens for consultation or transfer patients to higher-level hospitals. To effectively address this issue, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD has established a multi-tiered consultation network connecting top domestic and international hospitals, regional medical centers, and primary care hospitals. This remote consultation system enables primary healthcare institutions to access diagnostic expertise comparable to that of pathology teams at Grade A tertiary hospitals.

To date, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has deployed more than 170 such telepathology consultation platforms across China, partnering with renowned medical institutions including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, and Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center.

Through the remote pathology consultation platform, county-level hospitals can access the pathological diagnostic capabilities of Grade A tertiary hospitals, further implementing the tiered diagnosis and treatment system. This allows certain surgeries that can be performed at the primary care level to remain local. For instance, intraoperative frozen section pathology is typically required to confirm tumor resection margins and must generally be completed within 30 minutes. If a hospital cannot perform intraoperative frozen section examinations, it cannot proceed with the surgery, necessitating patient transfer to a higher-level hospital. Leveraging efficient data transmission, ultra-high-speed pathology slide scanning equipment, and optimized business processes, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD.’s solution achieves an average turnaround time of 25 minutes for rapid intraoperative frozen section consultations, effectively overcoming the constraints that frozen section diagnosis has imposed on the development of pathology services in primary care hospitals.

In addition to enabling remote consultations, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. also provides services such as remote teaching and training, scientific research, quality control, and technical training, thereby comprehensively enhancing the level of pathological diagnosis at primary healthcare institutions.

Deng Liang pointed out, “If the deployment in primary care institutions and tertiary hospitals relies solely on digital pathology scanners, digital slide scanning systems, and remote consultation platforms, the total market size will remain relatively limited.”

Recognizing this issue, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. pursued two strategic avenues for expansion: on one hand, it integrated with clinical practices by providing a whole-process sample tracking information management system for pathology services and AI-based diagnostic products, along with supporting hardware to enhance efficiency, thereby further extending the digital pathology chain and creating a fully closed-loop ecosystem for digital pathology departments; on the other hand, it offered research-grade, high-end imaging equipment to expand into the premium scientific research market.

Based on considerations for future development planning, Konfoong Bio currently has roughly formed four product lines:

1. Digital pathology scanner equipment. The digital pathology scanners capable of accurately and faithfully reproducing high-quality scanned pathological images, while enabling high-speed and stable scanning, form the foundation for Jiangfeng Bio’s entry into the field of digital pathology. Currently, its scanning speed for a 15 mm × 15 mm area under 20x magnification reaches as fast as 25 seconds per slide, fully accommodating ultra-large-scale scanning tasks.

2. Pathology Full-Process Information Management System. Previously, internal management systems in pathology departments only provided information-based functions such as patient information management, basic data feedback, and report generation. In the sample management phase, these systems often focused solely on final results, lacking management of the sample workflow process.

To this end, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. focused on two key aspects when developing its system: First, sample tracking. Without compromising work efficiency, the system achieves meticulous tracking of samples by comprehensively recording personnel, equipment, reagents, timestamps, and operational procedures at each stage. This enables real-time verification and traceability of workflows. In the event of quality control issues, the specific step where an error occurred can be rapidly identified, thereby continuously enhancing the management standards of the pathology department. Second, quality control. Strict adherence to the thirteen key quality control indicators for pathology is applied at every stage to ensure the issuance of reliable pathology reports and reduce the misdiagnosis rate in pathological diagnosis. Given that the hospital’s pathology department interacts with multiple other departments, including clinical and laboratory departments, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has also partnered with mainstream HIS (Hospital Information System) vendors to integrate systems and achieve data interoperability.

3. AI-based pathological diagnosis systems and supporting reagents. In the field of AI-assisted diagnosis, Jiangfeng Bio has chosen to enter areas with relatively large business volumes, such as cervical cancer, gastric cancer, thyroid tumors, and quantitative analysis of immunohistochemistry. The company already has several registered products in the AI diagnostics sector. Among them, the cervical cytology analysis system provides full-process slide preparation equipment and reagents, which, combined with a high-performance scanning and analysis system, forms a standardized intelligent analysis framework. This addresses the issues of low diagnostic efficiency and high misdiagnosis rates associated with traditional manual diagnosis.

Taking cervical cancer screening as an example, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD.’s AI-powered pathology diagnosis system can complete whole-slide scanning and analysis within 60 seconds per slide through automated analysis following digital pathology scanning. The system grades all cells, allowing pathologists to simply review the pre-selected fields of view, thereby significantly enhancing their work efficiency.

It is reported that Jiangfeng Bio utilized over 80,000 positive samples for training, all derived from high-quality annotations provided by tertiary hospitals and compiled into a premium sample library following rigorous quality control. During the use of this AI-based pathological diagnosis system, pathologists can provide annotation feedback; the corrected annotations are fed back into the system, which then continuously enhances its AI diagnostic capabilities through autonomous learning and iterative training.

4. Hardware equipment to support the pathology department in further achieving intelligent and digital upgrades. Such supporting devices as cassette laser printers, high-speed barcode scanners, batch sample handover systems, AI-powered voice recognition systems, and self-service report printing terminals enable traceability management across all workflows through digital technologies, significantly reducing labor costs and improving departmental operational efficiency.

New demands are continuously emerging in the field of digital pathology. For instance, some hospital physicians seek to share and discuss challenging cases after acquiring digital pathology images, while others require remote access to digital pathology images within their hospital departments. To address these needs, NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD. has developed a Cloud Pathology Slide Library for its users. Functioning similarly to “Baidu Netdisk,” this platform enables physicians to manage and process digital pathology images.

Jiangfeng Bio has also integrated certain AI analysis systems into its cloud slide library, allowing users to try them out for free and even leverage the pathological cloud slide library for data processing, annotation, and publication of research papers. While providing convenience to users, this initiative also promotes the market adoption of Jiangfeng Bio’s corresponding products.

For NINGBO KONFOONG BIOINFORMATION TECH CO.,LTD, providing one-stop solutions centered on digital pathology constitutes its unique competitive advantage. In the future, the company will continue to expand its portfolio of digital pathology scanners by introducing additional models, while also broadening the range of indications covered in AI-assisted pathological diagnosis. With its products already distributed across East Asia, the European Union, Africa, and North America, NINGBO KONFOONG plans to further extend its market reach by promoting its “digital scanner + remote consultation system” model in select developing countries.

Deng Liang believes that Jiangfeng Bio’s inherent R&D advantages and strategic layout constitute one of its key competitive edges over rivals. Furthermore, policy support from the Ningbo Municipal Government for high-tech medical enterprises has shortened the overall timeline from R&D to sales for Jiangfeng Bio, thereby enhancing its market responsiveness. In addition, a well-established product sales system enables the rapid commercialization of its newly developed products and accelerates their adoption and application improvement among clients.

Regarding future development trends, Deng Liang pointed out, “The pathology market will continue to expand, with a growth rate relatively faster than that of other medical specialties. The importance of pathology in the healthcare process will also be further enhanced.” He added, “Pathology departments are moving toward higher levels of standardization, with an increasing number of laboratories obtaining ISO 15189 accreditation. How to enhance the intelligence of management processes, achieve full digital transformation, and improve diagnostic efficiency and quality are key areas of focus for pathology companies in the future, while also harboring significant industry opportunities.”