DIGITAL PATHOLOGY
Digital pathology: what is actually required of the latest technology?
After publishing its predictions for digital pathology in 2026, Signify Research wanted to test those forecasts against clinical reality. Imogen Fitt and Alan Stoddart spoke with seven practising pathologists and laboratory leaders across academic and health system laboratories to find out what pathologists want from digital pathology.
At Signify Research, we spend a lot of time speaking with the vendors shaping the health technology and life sciences markets. Through our dedicated Digital Pathology Market Intelligence Service, we work closely with digital pathology vendors, life sciences companies, investors and adjacent technology providers across the ecosystem. But understanding a market properly
requires more than simply tracking vendors. Our research combines extensive primary research interviews with ongoing secondary market monitoring to ensure that strategic decisions are grounded in the clinical and operational realities of pathology laboratories. This means analysing vendor-
reported data to size the market, forecast competitive share and understand vendor strategies. Alongside this, we conduct regular end-user studies to explore how pathologists and laboratories actually view the market, including vendor perception, pricing dynamics and purchasing behaviour. In January, we spoke with seven
practising pathologists and one laboratory director while preparing our 2026 market predictions. We asked them a straightforward question: what do pathologists actually want from the digital pathology market this year? The striking part was not the answers themselves, but how consistent they were. Here are the key themes that emerged from those conversations.
1. Workforce pressure is reshaping digital adoption
Workforce pressure is influencing digital pathology adoption in two important ways. It affects laboratories’ ability to implement new systems, while also shaping expectations around the working environment for future pathologists. Importantly, this pressure is not
confined to pathologists or biomedical scientists. Across many healthcare organisations, shortages now extend to clinicians, nurses and, critically, the IT teams responsible for supporting digital infrastructure. As a result, laboratories may struggle to deploy new technologies even when there is clinical appetite to do so.
This constraint has important
Workflow optimisation and usability improvements are likely to deliver greater clinical value than incremental functionality.
implications for digital pathology adoption. In many laboratories, procurement decisions are not driven purely by technological preference but by operational feasibility. Even when beter tools exist, organisations may remain tied to incumbent vendors simply because they lack the internal IT capacity required to establish new integrations. At the same time, digital maturity
May 2026
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