West Yorkshire, April 2024
Airedale NHS Foundation Trust & Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have joined the other four NHS Trusts within the West Yorkshire area, (collectively known as the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT)) and have now gone live on the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC) digital pathology platform. This major milestone sees all pathology services across West Yorkshire benefit from digitising pathology services. By working together as a partnership of hospital trusts, WYAAT is helping to address health inequalities for 2.7 million people who live across West Yorkshire and Harrogate, not to mention those patients that are referred to one of the NHS Trusts from outside of West Yorkshire.
This national platform 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.
“It’s been an exceptional achievement and I’m really proud of what the NPIC team has delivered working with NHS Trusts across West Yorkshire. I would also like to thank our partners, Leica Biosystems, Sectra and Exponential-E.
The programme will continue to deliver Digital Pathology across our National portfolio of NHS Trusts, with further exciting updates throughout 2024.”
Bash Hussain – NPIC Director
Across West Yorkshire, the six Trusts deal with approximately 250,000 patient cases per annum generating approximately 850,000 digital images. This technology will enable over 90 consultant pathologists and a further 45 trainee consultants from across WYAAT to access pathology cases digitally.
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.
“It has been a remarkable journey to reach the milestone to go live and attain the ability to scan 100% of all cases. I can’t thank enough the technical team from both sites and of course Oliver and the team from the NPIC.”
Arun Manoharan – Consultant Histopathology, BTHFT
NPIC would like to thank some of the core team members from both Airedale NHS Foundation Trust & Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust who have played a pivotal role and collaborated with NPIC to reach this milestone for their Pathology Service and the wider WYAAT region:
- Dr Arun Manoharan (Lead Consultant Histopathologist – BTHFT)
- Dr Ritesh Sachdev (Consultant Histopathologist – AFT)
- Alison Boyle (Cross Site Histopathology Lead)
- Hannah Bateson (Pathology General Manager)
- Jonathon Stevens (Senior Biomedical Scientist)
- Chris Shilton (Pathology IT manager)
- Dave Griffith (Informatics Programme Manager)
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