Discover how Paige’s AI technology is revolutionizing cancer diagnostics, advancing patient care, and transforming the field of pathology.
With nearly two decades of experience in molecular diagnostics, biotechnology, and life sciences, Andy Moye is a leader in the fields of pathology, oncology, genomics, and precision medicine.
As CEO of Paige, Andy is driving the company’s mission to advance cancer detection, patient care, and treatment through cutting-edge AI technology. Paige aims to transform cancer diagnostics by harnessing the power of tissue-based AI, not only through industry-leading AI products but also by collaborating with labs worldwide to improve patient care.
Under Andy’s leadership, Paige successfully launched Paige Prostate Detect, the first AI-based pathology product authorized by the FDA for cancer detection in prostate biopsies. Andy’s focus extends to the development of disruptive biomarker AI algorithms, empowering pathologists to access previously inaccessible information.
Through this interview, we explore Andy Moye’s insights and experiences, as well as the future of Paige and the impact of AI on cancer diagnostics.
Below are the interview highlights:
Kindly brief us about yourself and your role as the CEO at Paige.
I have been at the forefront of the molecular diagnostics, biotechnology, and life sciences industries for nearly two decades, focusing on pathology, oncology, genomics, and precision medicine. At Paige, I help drive the company’s mission to advance cancer detection, patient care, and treatment through the development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology. We believe using the power of tissue-based AI will transform cancer diagnostics, and our goal is not only to create industry-leading AI products but to work with labs around the world to tap into that power and directly improve patient care.
I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to steer the U.S. launch of Paige Prostate Detect, the first and only AI-based pathology product to receive FDA marketing authorization for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) use in detecting cancer in prostate biopsies. Since then, I’ve focused on leading the company in the development of additional transformative and disruptive algorithms including our biomarker AI algorithms, designed to help pathologists obtain information that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access. I am excited to see how our continued work in diagnostic and biomarker AI will make an impact.
How has AI impacted cancer research and treatment so far, and what developments are you most excited about?
AI and machine learning is creating a whole new world for cancer treatment and diagnosis. One of the biggest ways AI can offer value to pathologists is by supporting efficient and confident diagnoses, and many independent studies have shown that Paige AI can deliver this for pathologists around the globe. But ultimately, we measure success by how many patients’ lives we positively impact – so far, our AI has been used on over 4,000 cases. We expect that number to grow to the tens of thousands over the course of the next year or so, and developments that will help make that happen are the ones that I am most excited about.
For example, we’ve partnered with large scanner companies like Leica to make digitizing glass pathology slides to enhance workflows in pathology and oncology easier. These deep technology integrations also make it possible for pathologists to adopt AI applications, including Paige Prostate Suite and Paige Breast Suite, and unlock AI’s full potential for routine clinical use more easily. These precise insights help medical professionals give patients even more effective care.
I am excited to see more hospital systems, particularly the large reference labs and academic medical centers, moving forward with digital pathology and AI. This summer we announced a partnership with Sonora Quest Laboratories to accelerate precision diagnostics for patients across Arizona—and we’re working with other labs across the world in the same way, to facilitate better integration, collaboration, and workflows for faster precision diagnoses and better patient and staff experiences.
In addition, the generative AI revolution has ushered in a new era of transformative AI that Paige is at the front edge of. We recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft that will help make AI cancer diagnostics accessible to countless laboratories and hospitals around the world as part of the digital transformation of pathology. This collaboration supports the development and delivery of a new generation of clinical applications and computational biomarkers to transform cancer diagnosis and patient care. It will also enable Paige to develop large-scale machine-learning models to push the boundaries of research in oncology and pathology.
Brief our audience about Paige and give an overview of its standout products and services.
With a global shortage of pathologists and big disparities in regional resources in digital pathology, AI can be the answer; Paige provides critical clinical support that can help to democratize care for patients globally and bring pathologists and oncologists the confidence they need.
It’s been 18 months since we earned the first-ever FDA approval for an AI in pathology, and we are still the only company with such approval, which is a tremendous source of pride for us. In that time, we’ve worked on continuing to build additional AI applications across prostate, breast, and other tissue types that meet the highest possible quality standards. Together with our robust integrations with AI applications from third parties, Paige can now deliver the widest portfolio of AI applications for pathologists.
But the value of Paige AI extends beyond that, we are also enabling the extraction of novel insights from digital slides that can’t be seen by the naked eye. These unique tissue signatures can help guide treatment decisions and enable the development of novel biomarkers from tissues for diagnostic, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies.
Paige’s product line currently includes:
- The Paige Platform, is a comprehensive platform that powers a lab’s complete digital pathology workflow, consisting of cloud storage, seamless access to Paige and third-party AI applications, and a secure connection to laboratory information systems (LIS) and other clinical information systems.
- FullFocus®, an FDA-cleared whole-slide image viewer that delivers advanced digital slide review tools, and FullFolio, our AI-powered digital worklist.
- The Paige Prostate Suite comprises Paige Prostate Detect, Paige Prostate Grade & Quantify, Paige Prostate Perineural Invasion, and the Paige Prostate Biomarker Suite.
- The Paige Breast Suite, including both Paige Breast and Paige Breast Lymph Node, as well as HER2Complete™.
- Integrations with leading third-party AI including Mindpeak IHC biomarker algorithms.
What are the core values on which the organization is built and what is the mission of the organization?
Paige is guided by being A.D.E.P.T – accountable, disruptive, execution-focused, patient-centric, and trusting. We work every day toward creating an environment where our employees feel supported so that they can create the best possible products for clinicians.
Our mission as an organization is to transform the world of cancer care through these AI tools – We frame this for most of the clinical users by reminding them that we already have techniques like IHC, PCR, NGS, and ISH, and now we have AI. AI is another tool at pathologists’ fingertips that can help them get to the right answer with greater efficiency and confidence.
Tools like the Paige Prostate Suite and Paige Breast Suite can ensure pathologists catch even the smallest and most complex cancers and are able to grade and quantify cancer in a more standardized way. For example, using Paige Breast Lymph Node, pathologists might catch a metastatic lesion that would have otherwise been missed because it was too small. In fact, in one recent study, Paige’s Breast Lymph Node improved pathologist sensitivity by 12%. This directly impacts treatment, which of course is the most important impact we can have.
Being a dynamic leader, how do you plan to bring to light Paige’s mission and vision?
There are four key elements that I strongly believe support our success today and in the future: Access to strong data, significant computing power, in-house expertise, and the need for our products and services.
Access to Data
Paige was founded in 2017 and the following year signed a data license deal with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), one of the world’s most respected comprehensive centers devoted exclusively to cancer and recognized as one of the top two cancer hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report for more than 30 years.
Significant Computing Power
As part of the new collaboration between Paige and Microsoft, Paige will use Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider for the Paige Platform. In addition, Microsoft’s world-class AI resources, cloud infrastructure, and global reach and scale will be combined with Paige’s deep expertise in developing AI cancer diagnostics. Together we will drive a new era of diagnostics and precision treatment to improve the lives of patients.
In House Expertise
At Paige, we have the world’s most talented engineers, AI scientists, pathologists, and thought leaders, who have all come together to shape the future of pathology. Every single person understands the business and is aligned on goals. My job is to keep supporting them in doing their best work.
Demand For Our Products and Services
The global shortage of pathologists is well documented, with only about 102,000 pathologists spread through more than 130 countries and nearly two-thirds of them located in just 10 countries. Some regions have tens of thousands of pathologists, while others have only a few. Digital pathology and AI can help bridge that gap.
And finally, precision medicine in cancer care is increasing in complexity and scale. AI and digital pathology are indisputably the future of the field as they provide insights at the point of diagnosis about genomic mutations, treatment response, or recurrence risk. Paige is constantly innovating to bring these insights to clinicians to help impact patient care, which is ultimately what we strive to achieve.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you face when using AI in cancer research and treatment, and how are you addressing these challenges?
The biggest challenge in the adoption of AI is really just change management. But AI tools are just that – tools that work together with pathologists to support a final diagnosis and streamline workflows. And like any new technology that gets adopted in healthcare, AI and digital pathology must address all facets of the quadruple aim – that is to reduce costs, improve clinical outcomes, and enhance physician and patient experience. We believe AI directly impacts all four areas.
So, to overcome this challenge, we educate pathologists, clinicians, and laboratory professionals about the benefits of AI and digital pathology. We enable these pathologists by providing powerful information at their fingertips, so they can make the best treatment decisions for patients. We may see a whole new generation of pathologists that will come into the field who are more like informatic pathologists. They will understand how to use the technology and how to curate the information they’re getting from AI and all the different algorithms. When pathologists see a whole-slide image on a viewer and all of the information they can see digitally, they’re blown away by how much easier and more efficiently it allows them to work.
What ethical considerations do you take into account when developing and implementing AI technologies in cancer research and treatment?
It’s critical to think about how AI systems are trained, whether they are biased, or whether there are any other ethical dilemmas involved with the utilization of an AI system for clinical use. One of the best ways to combat bias is by having access to the most representative sample of data possible, and ensuring that regulatory agencies like the FDA thoroughly vet AI systems to ensure robustness and generalizability of AI algorithms. We believe this is the reason that we remain the only company with FDA approval in this space because we use so much representative data to train our algorithms. We continue to expand on this by using more and more data to build algorithms that we know will be as representative as possible and to be very clear about how these algorithms should be used – again, as a tool for the pathologist.
How do you collaborate with other researchers and organizations to advance the use of AI in cancer research and treatment?
We are collaborating constantly with a myriad of organizations that are moving the needle. As I mentioned earlier, we have strong collaborations with research institutions and teaching hospitals, like Oxford and the University Medical Center in Utrecht, which are proving Paige effective in a clinical setting. We partner with Quest Diagnostics on a variety of initiatives including data and AI development and deployment, and we also partner with other AI companies to improve our offerings and streamline the interface between our technologies for greater ease of use for pathologists. We have technology partnerships with Leica and Microsoft. We are partnering with companies to sell our products all over the world and collaborating where it makes sense to drive a new era of diagnostics and precision treatment that improves the lives of patients.
What advice do you have for young researchers who are interested in pursuing a career in the intersection of AI and cancer research?
It is a transformative time in cancer and AI—so much is going to change about what we know and what we can do in the fight against cancer. AI and machine learning is moving at a rapid pace, and the next five years will be truly revolutionary when it comes to technology advancements. While Large Language Models are great, it is even more purposeful to use AI to fight diseases like cancer and solve some of the healthcare’s biggest problems. My hope is that top, young researchers choose this path to help patients.
What do you see as the future of AI in cancer research and treatment, and how do you plan to contribute to this exciting field?
I’m not an AI scientist, but in my view, the fields of computer vision, AI, deep learning, and machine learning are advancing at such a rate that I am confident they will be even more impressive in five years.
We’re starting to see interesting foundation models from Open AI, like GPT-4 that are trained on very large data sets. That’s important because the more data the system is trained on, the better it can learn and improve decision-making processes. This is the kind of thing we’re getting excited about. Everything we do at Paige is about deep science, but science is about being able to help patients. Within the next five years, I believe we will see pathologists becoming more comfortable using AI, and adoption will really ramp up —and patients will reap the benefits.
Andy Moye
Ph.D., MBA Chief Executive Officer, Paige
Dr. Andy Moye is a seasoned commercial leader and corporate development executive who has worked across the molecular diagnostics, biotechnology, and life sciences industries. He is currently Chief Executive Officer at Paige and previously served as Chief Commercial Officer, where he led the company’s clinical sales and commercial strategy, including the U.S. launch of Paige Prostate. Previously, Dr. Moye served as Head of Commercial Operations in North America and Latin America for the Digital and Computational Pathology division of Philips. Dr. Moye has also served in executive roles at leading healthcare companies including McKesson, Caris Life Sciences, and WaferGen Bio-systems, now part of Takara Bio. Prior to joining the industry, Dr. Moye served as a Lieutenant and flight officer in the U.S. Navy. He received a Ph.D. in health economics from Walden University, an MBA from the University of Florida, and a B.S. in physiology from the University of Arizona.
