Visiopharm
Visiopharm is AI-driven tissue image analysis software for digital pathology. It serves research teams and clinical laboratories with over 130 ready-made analysis APPs, no-code deep-learning training, and results delivered inside existing slide-viewing systems.
What is Visiopharm?
Visiopharm is tissue image analysis software for digital pathology, published by Visiopharm A/S in Hoersholm, Denmark. It reads whole-slide images of stained tissue and turns them into measured, reproducible values instead of leaving the assessment to visual estimation.
The platform serves two audiences. On the research side sit Oncotopix® Discovery and Phenoplex™; on the diagnostics side sit the IVDR-certified CE-IVD APPs. An "APP" is a modular analysis unit, and the APP Center holds 132 of them, described by the site as "over 130", across CE-IVD, Translational, Research and Quickstart categories. They span tissue types, stains and modalities: H&E, IHC, IF, FISH, RNAscope and RNA-ISH, multiplex and imaging mass cytometry. Named diagnostic APPs cover HER2, ER, PR and Ki-67 in breast cancer, PD-L1 in NSCLC, lymph-node Metastasis Detection AI and Hot Spot.
Discovery is the build-your-own loop: you annotate the structures that matter, the software trains a deep-learning model, and the resulting APP is applied at scale. The publisher summarises it as "See it / Train it / Find it", with no coding required. Phenoplex™ handles multiplexed spatial biology, phenotyping up to 8 markers automatically and 8-40+ under user guidance, with interactive data exploration. Qualitopix® measures and documents IHC staining consistency against standardised reference materials on Levey-Jennings charts, flagging drift. Tissuealign™ and Tissuearray™ cover serial-section alignment and tissue microarrays, alongside stereology and virtual double staining modules.
It opens the major whole-slide formats, from Aperio SVS and AFI to Nikon ND2, 3DHistech MRXS, Olympus and Evident VSI, Hamamatsu NDPI, Leica SCN, Zeiss CZI, Ventana BIF and Philips iSyntax, plus JPG, TIF, BMP and OME.TIFF, and it imports annotations from other platforms. It integrates into IMS/PACS for a zero-click workflow with Sectra IDS7 and Proscia Concentric AP among others, and is described as deployable web, on-prem or hybrid.
The regulatory framing matters. The CE-IVD APPs are IVDR-certified for in vitro diagnostic use in EU/UK and are not for sale in the USA, where translational APPs are offered instead; unless otherwise stated all products are Research Use Only, not for use in diagnostic procedures. The publisher holds EN ISO 13485:2016 certification and claims 3,500+ publications and 750+ accounts in more than 40 countries. On 21 May 2026 it announced that Grundium Oy had acquired Visiopharm A/S, both product lines remaining independently supported.
What it does
- Quantify biomarkers in tissue images automatically instead of scoring them by eye.
- Train a deep-learning APP by annotating tissue structures yourself, with no coding.
- Run zero-click whole-slide analysis that starts as soon as a slide is scanned.
- Pull results and overlays straight into an existing PACS or image management viewer such as Sectra or Proscia.
- Phenotype cells in multiplexed and spatial biology images, from low to high plex levels.
- Monitor IHC staining intensity day by day and get flagged when it drifts.
- Batch-process large image cohorts unattended for walk-away analysis.
When to use Visiopharm / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Visiopharm is the right fit.
When to use Visiopharm
- Pathology laboratories that want automated, reproducible biomarker scoring on IHC slides, including HER2, PD-L1, Ki-67, ER and PR.
- Hospitals already running a digital pathology PACS or image management system such as Sectra or Proscia, who want AI results waiting in the viewer they already use.
- Translational and preclinical researchers analysing multiplexed and spatial biology images, where Phenoplex™ phenotypes up to 8 markers automatically and 8-40+ under user guidance.
- Laboratories that need to monitor and document IHC staining consistency over time, using Qualitopix® and its Levey-Jennings charts.
- Pharma and CRO teams commissioning bespoke whole-slide algorithms for drug development and clinical-trial patient stratification through Pharma Services.
When not to use Visiopharm
- Buyers who want a self-serve product: there is no public price, no online sign-up and no free plan, and every route leads to a demo or a quote request.
- Anyone working outside tissue and slide imaging: this analyses histopathology images, not radiology scans, not generic photographs and not documents.
- United States laboratories that specifically need the IVD-labelled diagnostic APPs, because the CE-IVD APPs are not for sale in the USA, where translational APPs are offered instead.
- Individuals or small teams without a slide scanner or access to whole-slide images.
- Anyone looking for a general-purpose AI assistant or a mobile product, since no iOS or Android application exists.
How to use Visiopharm
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Start with a booked demo or a product inquiry and quote request: there is no self-service sign-up.
- Load whole-slide images from your scanner or from an existing image management system.
- Pick a ready-made APP from the APP Center, or start from a pretrained Quickstart APP and adapt it.
- To build your own analysis, annotate the structures of interest with the drawing tool.
- Let the software select the features and train the deep-learning model, with no coding on your side.
- Apply the finished APP to large datasets in batch.
- Re-annotate and enrich the APP over time, so that, as the publisher puts it, "the APP will grow with your research".
- In a diagnostic setting, rely on the zero-click workflow: the slide is analysed in the background after scanning and the results wait in the pathologist's viewer.
- Train your team through Visiopharm Academy: a self-paced e-learning library, instructor-led online courses at beginner and professional levels, and in-person options.
- Use phone, email or Live Remote Support once you are running, with Service Level Plans and Software Maintenance subscriptions available.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A very large ready-made APP library, 132 units covering many tissues, stains and modalities, so little has to be built from scratch.
- Users can train their own deep-learning models without any programming.
- IVDR-certified CE-IVD APPs and EN ISO 13485:2016 certification (BSI certificate MD 743221, expiry 2027-12-27) mean an audited quality system, which is unusual in AI tooling.
- Genuine zero-click integration into an existing PACS or IMS, rather than yet another separate viewer to open.
- A strong scientific track record is claimed: 3,500+ publications and 750+ accounts in more than 40 countries.
- One platform covers the whole span from discovery research through clinical trials to diagnostic decision support.
- GDPR documentation is published and itemised: three processing-activity annexes name subprocessors, locations and retention periods.
Cons
- No pricing whatsoever is published: no price list, no tiers, not even an order of magnitude, and the complete 50-page site inventory contains no pricing page.
- No free plan and no free trial is offered or mentioned; evaluation is a 30 to 60 minute demo.
- The CE-IVD APPs are not sold in the USA, so US laboratories are offered only translational APPs.
- There is no public API and no developer documentation, so integration goes through vendor-side IMS/PACS work.
- The site publishes nothing about whether customer data or images are used to train its AI models, and documents no opt-out.
- The site contradicts itself and carries stale content: the About page still says "privately owned company" months after the publisher announced its own acquisition, /contact-us/ redirects to the homepage, the legal notice was last updated in May 2020, and the COO's LinkedIn link points to an unrelated person.
- The published privacy documentation covers corporate and website personal data only; it says nothing about the handling of the patient slide images the software actually processes.
Pricing & Plans
No price is published. The publisher operates a quote-only model: the "Product inquiry / Request a quote" form is named by the site itself as the route for "pricing information", and it publishes no amount. This absence was verified across all 29 collected pages and the complete 50-page site inventory, so it is a confirmed absence rather than a collection gap. There is no free plan and no free trial; evaluation is a booked demo. Chargeable items are named without amounts: Service Level Plans, Professional Online Support packages of 4 or 8 hours, the Software Maintenance Service subscription, purchasable support hours, custom APPs and Pharma Services. Complimentary technical support is included during the first-year purchase warranty, and the support entitlement covers up to three shared users with options to add more. Three monetary figures do appear on the site, and none of them is a price of this product: EUR 13.3 million was a 2018 investment round; up to EUR 3,000 over 16 weeks is a saving measured by UMC Utrecht; and around EUR 250 per HER2-FISH test is a cost quoted by Vejle Hospital.
- tiered support
- where higher tiers give faster response times and more personalised support
- including shared support for up to three users plus pre-booked training sessions. A support tier
- not a software licence tier. No price is published.
- application support sold in packages of 4 or 8 hours. A support package
- not a software licence tier. No price is published.
- a subscription giving access to the latest software versions and unlimited technical support. A maintenance tier
- not a software licence tier. No price is published.
- complimentary technical support included with a purchase during the first year. A support entitlement
- not a software licence tier. No price is published.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Visiopharm handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is explicit and documented. The policy states it is "prepared and made available to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679 of 27 April 2016)", is published as version 8 dated 27.09.2023, and enumerates the full data-subject rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection including to direct marketing, no solely automated decisions, withdrawal of consent, portability and complaint to the supervisory authority, all subject to legal conditions. Processors are always engaged under a GDPR-compliant data processing agreement. Transfers outside the EU/EEA occur, a transfer impact assessment has been made, and transfers to third countries including the US are "always conducted based on EU standard contractual clauses", a copy available on request. Three processing-activity annexes are published as PDFs. No Article 27 EU representative is named because the controller is itself EU-established, in Denmark; that is not a gap.
Who owns the data?
The privacy policy names Visiopharm A/S, Agern Allé 24.2, DK 2970-Hørsholm, Denmark as data controller, together with "the Visiopharm company you have your relationship with". That policy, version 8 dated 27.09.2023, covers the personal data of website visitors, newsletter subscribers, customers and suppliers only. Where the publisher processes personal data on a customer's behalf it acts as a processor, under a data processing agreement. Nothing published states who owns the tissue slide images, patient data or analysis results handled by the software itself, so ownership of that clinical material is simply not addressed on the site. GDPR questions go to privacy@visiopharm.com.
Reuse rights
The published policy governs the publisher's own use of personal data; it grants end users no reuse licence over anything. Stated purposes are delivering products and services, service messages, legal and bookkeeping retention, newsletters, support, facilitating a sales process, improving products, services and the website, responding to complaints, and direct marketing. It explicitly includes profiling: "To perform profiling of users, customers or members to analyse and predict their preferences and/or behavior." Consent is collected before data from different sources is integrated and before behavioural analysis for marketing, and Scileads is named as an external prospecting source. The legal bases cited are Article 6(1)(a) consent, 6(1)(b) contract and 6(1)(f) legitimate interests. On whether customer data or slide images are used to train the publisher's AI models the site makes no statement in either direction, and no opt-out is documented.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The named hosting locations concern the vendor's corporate and website systems only, as itemised in its published processing-activity annexes: HubSpot in Ireland, Microsoft Office 365 (CRM Dynamics, SharePoint Online) in the EU, Columbus (Microsoft Navision Dynamics) in the EU, and Outreach in the US. Transfers outside the EU/EEA do occur; a transfer impact assessment has been made, and transfers to third countries including the United States are covered by EU Standard Contractual Clauses, a copy of which is available on request. The scope limit matters: those locations cover personal data of website visitors, customers and suppliers. The site says nothing about where customer slide images or analysis results are stored, so nothing here should be read as a statement about patient image hosting. The software itself is described as deployable web, on-prem or hybrid, which means much of the image processing can remain on the customer's own infrastructure. Any data-residency requirement should be settled contractually rather than inferred from the published policy.
Where Visiopharm works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Visiopharm.
- Read the labelling before any clinical use: unless a product is explicitly stated otherwise, it is Research Use Only, not for use in diagnostic procedures. Only the CE-IVD APPs carry IVD status, and only for EU/UK.
- This is diagnostic decision support, not a diagnosis. A pathologist still reads and signs the case, and automation bias, trusting a quantified score more than the slide in front of you, is a real human risk once the numbers arrive pre-computed in the viewer.
- The site states that its product information is intended only for residents in Europe and the United States, and that products may or may not be available in any particular country and may be approved with different indications and restrictions.
- No price, no trial and no self-serve route means budget cannot be estimated from the site at all, so procurement depends entirely on the vendor conversation.
- Nothing is published about whether customer images or data are used to train the vendor's AI models, and no opt-out is documented, so this has to be settled contractually.
- The published GDPR annexes describe corporate and website personal data; they do not describe how patient slide data is handled, which is the part that matters most in a clinical setting.
- Stale and self-contradictory content is a signal in itself: the About page still calls the company "privately owned" after the acquisition was announced on the same site, the legal notice dates from May 2020, /contact-us/ redirects to the homepage, and one executive's LinkedIn link points to an unrelated person.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Moderate to high, and the two efforts are different. Building analyses needs no coding, but it does need real tissue-morphology expertise, and the Academy path, beginner then professional instructor-led courses, implies a genuine learning curve. The IT side is a real integration project: the vendor says every installation differs and assigns a dedicated onboarding team. IMS/PACS integration is presented as standards-based for Sectra, with "no custom changes needed", and available for Proscia. Deployment is web, on-prem or hybrid, or standalone with a slide scanner. General IT, OS patching, user rights and network troubleshooting sit explicitly outside support scope.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Visiopharm
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does Visiopharm do?
Is it approved for diagnostic use?
Can I buy the diagnostic APPs in the United States?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Do I need to code to build an analysis?
Does it fit my existing systems?
Is there an API?
Where is data hosted, and for how long?
Who owns Visiopharm now?
Should you pick Visiopharm?
Visiopharm is a mature, highly specialised platform rather than a general-purpose AI tool. It fits laboratories that are already digital or actively going digital, and it fits badly anyone hoping to try software the same afternoon.
Its differentiator is a combination that is rare in this market: a large library of ready-made analysis APPs; a training loop that lets a pathologist or researcher build a deep-learning model from annotations without writing code; and an audited quality system, with EN ISO 13485:2016 certification and an IVDR-certified CE-IVD portfolio behind the diagnostic APPs. Add genuine zero-click integration into Sectra and Proscia systems, and the platform stops being another viewer to open and becomes part of a workflow that already exists.
The regulatory perimeter is geographically split and should be read carefully. The CE-IVD APPs are for in vitro diagnostic use in EU/UK and are not for sale in the USA, where translational APPs are offered instead; unless otherwise stated, everything else is Research Use Only, not for use in diagnostic procedures. Where the CE-IVD APPs are used, the publisher positions them as decision support for the pathologist who signs the case: the software supports that decision, it does not make it.
Commercial opacity is the main friction. No price, no tier, no trial and no self-serve path are published, so a budget cannot be formed before a conversation with the vendor. Site maintenance is uneven too, and several published statements are visibly out of date, including an About page that still describes a privately owned company after the same site announced, on 21 May 2026, that Grundium Oy had acquired Visiopharm A/S with continuity of both product lines. Buyers should confirm the current commercial and regulatory position directly with the vendor rather than rely on the website.
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