LEEDS, West Yorkshire, November 2023
Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust have now connected to the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC) digital pathology picture archiving and communication system (PACS). This high-capacity pathology image repository and exchange system, revolutionises how pathologists provide patient services and expert opinions, which will facilitate digital transformation across pathology for the Trust. This marks another major milestone towards national roll-out of the system, delivering on NPIC’s mission to revolutionise NHS pathology, enabling sharing of expertise, and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) in diagnosis.
This will not only aid reducing waiting times and increase reliability of decisions but offer the ability for digital images to be extracted and anonymised for the purpose of research, training, and support testing of AI algorithms to help medical professionals make more efficient diagnoses.
NPIC have a busy deployment roadmap running into 2024 as part of our national scale up across the country, connecting even more NHS partners onto the national network, benefitting millions of patients around the country.
“This is another major milestone for the NPIC Programme and a significant achievement for the whole team at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust. The Trust can see immediate benefits through sharing of information across the region to support improved patient care.”
Ian Mason: Programme Head – Digital Deployment & Business Services, NPIC
The ambitious programme is led by NPIC and enabled in partnership with world leading industry experts including Sectra, Leica Biosystems & Exponential-e to supply unmatched technology and expertise in this exciting an expanding field.
NPIC would like to thank the members of the laboratory, pathology and technical teams who have collaborated with us to deliver this exciting addition to their Pathology Service, and particular reference to some of the key members of the Mid York’s team that supported the go live:
- Dr Craig Sayers (Lead Consultant Histopathologist)
- Sara Shakes (Specialist BMS in Histology)
- Javed Khan (Pathology IT Manager)
- Karen Hilton (BMS)
- Charlie Tilburn (Project Manager)
Dr Craig Sayers: Consultant Histopathologist, Associate Chief Clinical Information Officer, Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust“We are delighted to have gone live with Digital Pathology here at the Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust. This is the result of many months of collaborative work with NPIC. We are now scanning current histology cases into the system and several consultant histopathologists have begun the validation process to ensure safe reporting with this new way of working. We are already seeing the benefits of the digital reporting tools we can now use, as well as instant access to patients’ previous histology slides and reports from around the region. We are excited about the prospects of more efficient ways of reporting and improvement in referral and review pathways.”
About NPIC
National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, NPIC (Project no. 104687) is supported by a £50m investment from the Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine challenge, managed and delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
NPIC is a unique collaboration between NHS, academic and industry partners. NPIC is deploying digital pathology across hospitals in England and will develop artificial intelligence tools to help diagnose cancer and other diseases.
More information can be found at: www.npic.ac.uk