Our story
Vistapath is championing a new mindset in healthcare that embraces technology to drive the future of pathology
There, the unthinkable happened—the lab mixed up two patient samples. This was an error that led to incorrect treatment and harm for both patients, and it has stayed with Tim to this day. Even then, pathology was operating the same way it had been for nearly a century—repetitive, manual workflows that left plenty of room for errors. Without any significant innovation, these same errors continue to impact patients around the world. Leveraging his years of experience as a histotechnician, Tim partnered with Ben Burley, an accomplished leader in technical product development, to create Vistapath.
Vistapath was founded to accomplish a single mission: to modernize pathology, giving pathology labs the tools they need to increase the quality, efficiency, and consistency across all critical lab processes, because when patients are involved it’s critical to get it right. Since that first day, every decision made or product built is done in the service of that mission.
Even the hardest challenges can be overcome with the right team. We’ve brought together some of the best minds in the industry to innovate pathology.
We’re grateful for the support and guidance from our investors.
CEO
Timothy Spong – Tim is the CEO and one of the founders of Vistapath. Before starting Vistapath, he had a 15 year career in histology, from a histology technician through to managing laboratory networks at large academic medical centers. During his time in the clinical lab, Tim saw how a lack of innovation in histology was negatively impacting patient care; his passion is to bring that innovation to the histology space.
COO
Ben leads product development and manages financial strategy. Starting with 4+ years in biomedical research, Ben has been pursuing customer-driven product development and manufacturing for over 12 years. Most recently Ben drove product and process development at Cuming Microwave, a growing OEM for the aerospace industry.
Throughout his career Ben has been engrossed in new and challenging technologies, while developing innovative solutions to bring these technologies to market. He received an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology from Reed College and more recently has completed graduate work at MIT and the Sloan School of Management, developing methods for complex product valuation while completing a degree with the System Design and Management program.
CTO
Jacob Guggenheim leads the engineering team at Vistapath. He is passionate about using technology and augmentation to improve healthcare where it’s needed most. Previous to Vistapath, he received his BS in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He then moved to MIT for his MS in Mechanical Engineering where he worked on single-cell manipulation. Finally, he completed his PHD in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Human-Machine systems at MIT where he studied the contributions of the human operator to supernumerary robotic limbs.