Digital pathology company Deciphex raises €3.9m in additional funding

Digital pathology company Deciphex has raised an additional €3.9 million as part of its Series B funding round, positioning the company for further growth.

The additional funding was led by Seroba Life Sciences, the European life sciences venture capital firm that has also backed Atlantic Therapeutics, and existing Deciphex investors. That follows the €10.9 million raised by the company in its initial Series B round in May last year, bringing the total for the Series B round to €14.4 million.

The capital will support the company’s plans to continue its growth and innovation, backed by Seroba’s expertise in the health tech and life sciences sector. It also intends to grow its workforce, and expects to add around 80 jobs by the end of the year to the current 120 it has worldwide. The roles are likely to focus on operations, logistics and the research and development side, particularly in software engineering and artificial intelligence.

“We’ve seen accelerating demand, even beyond our expectations for services,” said chief executive and cofounder Donal O’Shea. “Our ability to play into that is certainly underpinned to a greater extent by the new capital that we’ve taken on board.”

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The Irish company develops software and artificial intelligence to accelerate the delivery of pathology services, increasing efficiency for pathologists and potentially improving patient outcomes. It has been rapidly growing capabilities in the pathology computer aided diagnostics sector. The application of such can help reduce wait times for patients, ultimately leading to improved productivity and better outcomes.

“We are just about 120 people worldwide, and that’s grown nearly 2x in the last 12 months,” said Mr O’Shea. “We have plans to continue to grow and scale. We certainly see ourselves having close to 200 people in the organisation by the end of 2023.”

Some roles will be overseas, with the company’s Irish workforce accounting for between 60 and 70 per cent of staff being recruited.

Founded in 2017, the company has helped to drive traction in the research pathology market, with many of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and contract research organisations using its Patholytix digital pathology platform.

The company expanded to the US last year, launching its Diagnexia virtual pathology service there in September. Deciphex’s technology could play an increasingly important role in dealing with increasing volumes and complexity of cases, while pathologist numbers are declining and waiting lists continue to lengthen.