Patients throughout the West Midlands are set to benefit from a new digital pathology programme, which aims to reduce backlogs for cancer services and improve the speed and accuracy of diagnoses.
It will be delivered in partnership between the West Midlands Cancer Alliance initiative and the medical imaging technology provider Sectra. The programme will provide pathologists with digital tools to collaborate, share expertise and capacity amongst four NHS pathology networks: Black Country Pathology Service, Birmingham and Solihull, South Midlands Pathology and North Midlands, South Cheshire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin.
The programme has seen the deployment of a picture archiving and communication system (PACs), which will allow healthcare professionals to access diagnostic images with a range of digital tools and will facilitate collaborations between staff allowing them to report on the images shared regardless of their locations.
Professor Neil Anderson, NHS Midlands Regional Pathology Clinical Lead and the Chief Scientist at Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, commented: “This is one of the most significant events in the last century around how our pathologists work and how that could lead to cancer pathway improvement.”
He added: “We will be able to share second opinions more easily, without the need to package and transport slides across different laboratories, which can cause substantial delay. And our new digital platform will help us to explore AI to rapidly triage patients. Once patients are diagnosed, multi-disciplinary teams will have easier access to important information to help them manage patient care.”
Phil Williams, NHS England’s Head of Digital Transformation for the Midlands, added: “The significance and scale of this programme is enormous… The technology we have deployed is an enabler for sharing reporting capacity across the West Midlands – giving us the tools on which we can accelerate the strategic long term service transformation that is already underway to allow NHS services and professionals to work together around the needs of patients.
“Our programme, which uses private cloud, gives us the scalability and flexibility we need. The platform is also based on standards, allowing it to interoperate with other NHS systems and enabling us to take data out of silos, opening new possibilities to inform potentially life-saving research.”
