The global market for breast cancer imaging and biopsy technologies is expected to reach $5.8bn by 2022, a CAGR of 5.9%, driven by innovation technologies and machine-learning tools that serve as "second readers" to help radiologists triage images and find cancers. Many radiologists believe that mammography will remain the most widely used screening tool, but that digital breast tomosynthesis will ultimately become the gold standard. Here's a close look at the overall breast imaging and biopsy market, highlighting different modalities and key players, and offering the real-world use perspective from three radiologists at Kaiser Permanente, San Diego.

The relative absence of blockbuster M&A within medtech in 2018, compared with recent years, does not mean that consolidation of the industry – and of providers and payers – will not continue apace in 2019 and beyond. In fact, it is written – if not in the stars then possibly in digital coding – that there will be fewer and bigger entities at the top end of the ecosystem of medtech stakeholders. And rising demand will be met more and more by digital tools and functionalities.

The relative absence of blockbuster M&A within medtech in 2018, compared with recent years, does not mean that consolidation of the industry – and of providers and payers – will not continue apace in 2019 and beyond. In fact, it is written – if not in the stars then possibly in digital coding – that there will be fewer and bigger entities at the top end of the ecosystem of medtech stakeholders. And rising demand will be met more and more by digital tools and functionalities.

Several major global health-care diagnostics groups have won bids to spearhead five new UK centers of excellence for digital pathology and imaging, including radiology and using AI medical advances. A key aim of the initiative, provided for under the UK Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, is to create a brand new commercial sector around the development of AI for diagnostics, says Neil Mesher, CEO of Philips UK and Ireland, which has a role in two of the centers.