Lumea is the U.S. leader in primary clinical digital pathology, processing the highest volume of primary digital diagnoses nationwide. With over a decade of expertise, its innovative tissue-handling technology and AI-driven workflows set a new standard for efficiency, quality, and cancer diagnostics. With a global presence spanning five continents, Lumea supports over half of the U.S. urology market and top dermatology and gastroenterology groups, optimizing tissue integrity, boosting detection rates, and delivering measurable ROI.
Meet the Lumea Leadership Team
James Thackeray
Chief Executive Officer
Chelsea Sowards
Chief Revenue Officer
Katie Atkins
Chief Finance Officer
Andy Ivie
Chief Innovation Officer
Bianca Collings
Chief Marketing Officer
Kyron Nielsen
EVP of Operations
Aaron Leonard
VP of AI & Dev Ops
Jake Brown
VP of Product Strategy & Strategic Partnerships
Mike Frampton
VP of Product & Design
Our Core Values
Humility
We strive to seek understanding, lead by serving, and celebrate others in our digital pathology company.
DaVincian Innovation
Our unique team practices DaVincian Innovation to deliver radical,
elegant, simple solutions.
Quality
This is one of our greatest passions as we support those who serve patients with uncompromised quality.
Revolutionizing Diagnostic Medicine: Lumea’s Story
The Problem No One Was Solving
In the early 2010s, digital pathology had been “the future” for more than a decade. The technology existed. The regulatory pathway was clearing. Venture capital was flowing. And yet, in labs and pathology suites across the country, pathologists were still hunched over microscopes, shipping glass slides overnight, and waiting days for second opinions.
Dr. Matthew O. Leavitt knew why. A Stanford-trained pathologist practicing in Utah, he had tried to go digital himself. He and his colleague Dr. Jared Szymanski purchased a whole slide image scanner and the best digital solutions available at the time, only to discover what countless labs before them had already learned: the technology added more problems than it solved. The cost was steep, the integration was complex, the workflow was slower, and the promised efficiency gains never materialized.
The problem, they realized, wasn’t the scanner. It wasn’t the software. It was everything that happened before the tissue reached the scanner, and everything that happened in between. Digital pathology had been built starting at the slide. Nobody had started at the tissue.
In 2015, Dr. Leavitt left his clinical practice and founded Lumea with a different hypothesis: that the answer to making digital pathology viable and valuable lay within the tissue itself, beginning at the moment of specimen acquisition.
The Answer Is in the Tissue
With the founding team assembled and the problem defined, Lumea set out to build what no one else had: a digital pathology platform that addressed the full diagnostic chain, from the moment a biopsy needle enters a patient’s body through the final pathology report.
One of Lumea’s first breakthroughs were the BxBoard® and BxChip® which increased efficiency and improved tissue handling and standardization. Viewer+™ and BxLink™, Lumea’s digital pathology IMS/Viewer and combined Viewer/LIS, were built around a single premise: everything a pathologist needs to sign out a case should be on one screen. Image rendering in milliseconds, AI tools integrated directly into the workspace, molecular test ordering with a single click, and LIS integration that eliminated parallel workflows. The platforms that emerged weren’t just digital pathology softwares but whole a diagnostic operating systems.
In March 2025, Viewer+ received FDA 510(k) clearance for primary clinical diagnosis, making it one of only a handful of digital pathology platforms in the United States to meet that regulatory standard. A few months later, Lumea earned CE marking under the EU’s In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR) for clinical use across Europe, a rigorous certification that opened the door to international expansion and gave European hospitals and labs the regulatory confidence to adopt the platform. These were not incremental steps. They were the validation of a decade of clinical and scientific work.
From Utah Startup to National Leader
Lumea’s growth has been driven not by marketing but by clinical outcomes. Labs that adopted the platform reported results that were hard to argue with: 76% reduction in lab time, 53% faster ancillary test turnaround, and diagnostic accuracy improvements that were verifiable and reproducible.
Word spread through pathology networks. Independent urology groups, dermatopathology practices, and gastroenterology networks began adopting the platform. PathNet, TruCore Pathology, Acupath Laboratories, Utah Valley Dermatology, and GI Alliance (the nation’s largest GI network) all chose Lumea as their digital pathology platform. KLAS Research highlighted Lumea as a prominent leader in clinical use digital pathology. The Inc. 5000 recognized Lumea among the fastest-growing private companies in America and the Global Health and Pharma Awards recognized Lumea as Healthcare Tech Innovator of the Year.
By 2026, Lumea was processing more primary digital diagnoses than any other platform in the United States, supporting over 40% of the U.S. outpatient prostate cancer market with growing national leadership in dermatopathology and gastroenterology. Over two years, the company achieved 400% volume growth with a global presence spanning five continents.
A New Chapter of Leadership
In 2026, Lumea entered a new phase of growth. Former Governor of Utah and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael O. Leavitt was appointed Chairman of the Board, bringing decades of healthcare policy expertise and national credibility to the company’s governance. A newly formed Board of Directors, including Matthew O. Leavitt, MD, Donnie Rizzo, Anthony Perry, MD, Jerry Lee, PhD, and Joanne Brattain, brought deep expertise across healthcare policy, clinical medicine, engineering, and commercial strategy.
James Thackeray, who had served as a founding executive and longtime leader, assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer in 2025, bringing operational focus and industry relationships built through the Digital Diagnostic Summit and years of direct engagement with pathologists, lab directors, and health system leaders.
The leadership transition reflects a company that has moved from startup to category leader, now building the infrastructure, the partnerships, and the platform to define what digital pathology looks like for the next decade.
Our Mission
Lumea exists because patients deserve diagnoses they can trust, and pathologists deserve tools that let them deliver their best work. Every product we build, every partnership we form, and every lab we serve is oriented toward a single outcome: better diagnostics, better outcomes.
The tissue matters. The pathologist matters. The patient matters.
That has been true since the day Dr. Leavitt left his practice to start this company. It will remain true long after the technology has evolved beyond what any of us can currently imagine.
Awards & Recognitions
Lumea’s Founders
Matthew O. Leavitt, MD | Founder
Dr. Matthew O. Leavitt is a Stanford-trained pathologist and the visionary founder of Lumea. After nearly two decades in clinical pathology, he recognized that the field was poised for a digital transformation, but that the existing solutions were failing the very pathologists and labs they were supposed to serve.
His founding insight was deceptively simple: if you want digital pathology to improve diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, you have to fix the tissue handling first. No viewer, however sophisticated, can compensate for fragmented, disoriented, or compromised specimens. Lumea’s foundational tissue-handling technology, including the BxBoard, BxChip, and BxCamera, grew directly from this conviction.
Dr. Leavitt led Lumea through its first decade of growth, guiding the company from a Utah startup to the U.S. leader in primary clinical digital pathology. In 2026, he transitioned to an active Board of Directors role, beginning a period of volunteer service in Romania while remaining deeply connected to the company’s mission.
Jared Szymanski, MD | Co-Founder
Dr. Jared Szymanski is a board-certified pathologist and co-founder of Lumea. Alongside Dr. Leavitt, he was among the earliest practicing pathologists to attempt a full digital transition in a clinical setting, and among the first to experience firsthand why that transition was failing.
His perspective as a working pathologist shaped the foundational design principles that have guided Lumea’s development: the platform should serve the pathologist, not the other way around. Every tool Lumea has built has been tested against a simple standard that Dr. Szymanski helped establish: does this make diagnosis faster, more accurate, and more accessible for the pathologist at the bench?
Dr. Szymanski has continued to contribute to Lumea’s clinical direction and has shared his experience transitioning to digital pathology with the broader pathology community through the PathPulse podcast and the Digital Diagnostic Summit.
Mark Evans, PhD | Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer (Emeritus)
Mark Evans, PhD, is a co-founder of Lumea and was its first full-time employee. As Chief Scientific Officer from the company’s earliest days, he was the scientific architect behind Lumea’s tissue-handling technology, translating the clinical insights of Dr. Leavitt and Dr. Szymanski into engineered solutions that could be manufactured, validated, and deployed in clinical environments.
Mark’s contributions to Lumea’s intellectual property are foundational. The BxBoard and the fixation methodology that underpins Lumea’s pre-analytical workflow all bear his fingerprints. The peer-reviewed research demonstrating 18.79% higher cancer detection rates, 35% reduction in tissue fragmentation, and 28% increase in core length on the glass slide reflects a decade of scientific work that he led.
After nearly a decade of building the scientific foundation of the company, Mark retired from Lumea in 2026. His legacy is embedded in every specimen that passes through a Lumea system and every diagnosis that benefits from the tissue quality he helped make possible.
