GOSH becomes go-to digital pathology centre for children

Pathology is the study of diseases and underpins every aspect of patient care, including diagnostic testing, treatment advice and preventing disease. Pathologists study samples from a person’s body to understand what’s making them unwell and to advise on their treatment. Pathologists also play an important role in research, investigating the effects of new medicines in clinical trials.

Histopathology is a branch of pathology that examines diseases in tissue. Tissue samples are taken from patients via biopsies or other procedures and are examined on glass slides under a microscope. Currently, if a hospital does not have a Histopathologist who can examine the samples, or if the clinician wants to ask for a second opinion from a colleague at a different hospital, they have to send the glass slides off to be reviewed. This system means there is potential for the glass slides to get damaged during transportation and can also be time consuming, meaning that patients and families sometimes have to wait a long time for a diagnosis.

NPIC is a programme led by between Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust which aims to deploy digital pathology systems in hospitals across the country. The digital pathology process allows clinicians to make digital images of tissue samples.  Using high-resolution scanners, each ‘slide’ is converted into an enormous image, as big as a tennis court.

The new system means that Pathologists at GOSH will now be able to quickly make on-screen measurements, add notes to the image and share images with colleagues at other hospitals, to get second opinions to support diagnosis and treatment. This could lead to quicker turnaround times for more accurate and efficient diagnoses between the histopathology lab and consultants.

The data collected in the digital pathology scanners are linked to secure laboratory IT systems and can be anonymised for medical research and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As with other areas of medical imaging, AI has the potential to perform automated analyses of pathology images, which could support assessments and lead to more equitable care.

Digital images are also easier to store, preserve and retrieve for future use, meaning they can easily be accessed when needed, rather than fragile glass slides having to be manually retrieved from an archive.

The digitisation of slides has the potential to transform the practice of diagnostic Pathology. Over the past 30 years we have seen this happen in Radiology, which has been revolutionised by the introduction of digital imaging and has led to an improvement in quality and safety of reporting, and innovation in the analysis of radiological images.

NPIC is creating a national network to enable easy sharing of these digital images between hospitals, enabling faster diagnosis and treatment decisions and reducing health inequalities in areas with less access to pathology reporting expertise. Already 6 hospitals are connected to the NPIC network in the Yorkshire region, however GOSH will be the first Trust outside of the region to go-live with the system.

GOSH is also the first paediatric hospital to go-live with NPIC and will lead the Paediatric network for digital pathology, meaning that we will be the go-to centre for second opinions and support for diagnosis and treatment advice for digital pathology scans for children.

“We are incredibly excited to be going live with digital pathology here at GOSH. The NPIC system has the ability to speed up diagnosis, treatment and research for our patients, and as leads for the paediatric network we look forward to supporting the care of children and young people across the country.

"This project has taken years of hard work, having begun with a UK R&I Research grant back in 2021. I would like to thank NPIC and everyone at GOSH who was involved in making this go-live possible, particularly the GOSH pathology, IT and EPR teams!”

- Professor Thomas Jacques, Professor of Paediatric Neuropathology at UCL GOS Institute of Child Health and Clinical Lead & Laboratory Director for Histopathology at GOSH

"We are delighted to be working with the team at GOSH to implement digital pathology in their laboratory and this go-live is a great achievement for all of us. The diagnosis of cancer and other diseases in children and young people is very important, and paediatric pathology is an area with significant staffing challenges in the NHS.

"This deployment is the first step in creating a national paediatric pathology network across all the centres in England, which will improve not only diagnosis and allow faster second opinions, but will also support important research in diseases such as childhood cancer."

- Dr Darren Treanor, NPIC Programme Director, Consultant Pathologist (LTHT), Honorary Clinical Professor (UoL), Adjunct Professor in Digital Pathology, (Linköping University, Sweden), Digital Pathology Lead for Royal College of Pathologists (UK)

Ensuring the safety and privacy of patient data remains a priority for both GOSH and the NPIC team. We have strict governance in place to ensure that all medical images are stored and handled securely. The NPIC team has provided training and ongoing support to the GOSH pathology team, and only authorised staff will have access to platform.

Find out more about the NPIC Project here.