LEEDS, West Yorkshire, July 2024
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) has gone live this week with the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC) digital pathology system leading the way for paediatric care, as GOSH will be the go-to centre to support diagnosis and treatment advice for digital pathology images for children and young people.
The NPIC national system is transforming traditional methods, which could lead to quicker turnaround for more accurate and efficient diagnoses and accelerate research. This is a huge achievement for GOSH, NPIC and all involved and as the lead organisation for the paediatric network it has the technology and system in place to lead the way in digital pathology for pediatric care. The network will be expanding to other children’s hospitals over the coming months, strengthening the ability for consultants to seek 2nd opinions and ultimately provide a faster diagnosis for children all over the country.
GOSH is the first paediatric hospital to go-live with the NPIC Digital Pathology solution outside of West Yorkshire and will lead the paediatric network for digital pathology, meaning that world renowned GOSH 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 the teams from the Pathology, Electronic Patient Record, IT teams at GOSH and everyone involved in making this go-live possible“
Professor Thomas Jacques, Professor of Paediatric Neuropathology at UCL GOSH Institute of Child Health and Clinical Lead & Laboratory Director for Histopathology at GOSH
Why create a national paediatric network?
NPIC recognises that digital pathology is a major laboratory and clinical transformation, and a complex IT project and this is a key part of our teaching and dissemination material, and the message we give out at the in-person workshops. We recognise the importance of linking specialty services across the country to support and provide the best care for patients that require access to these specialty services. The aim of NPIC is not simply to scale up to more sites, but to build foundations for the NHS to be a world leader in digital pathology, benefiting patients and stimulating the UK life sciences industry.
In line with the NHS Long term plan, our national system will provide immediate benefit in two specialist areas – paediatric pathology, which has a 20% workforce gap nationally; and Bone & Soft Tissue, Sarcoma, where only 5 consultant pathologists can diagnose bone tumours nationally.
“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.”
Prof Darren Treanor, NPIC Programme Director and Consultant Pathologist
The national networks, both Paediatric and Sarcoma aim 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. NPIC now have 7 hospitals live on the network with a further 12-15 hospitals expected to go live across England in the next 12-18 months, further strengthening the benefit of the national network.
This is a huge achievement and an exciting time for all involved. NPIC’s ambition and desire to continue to drive forward and lead the way for digital pathology comes with significant support and expertise from world leading industry experts including Sectra, Leica Biosystems, and Exponential-E. We would like to thank our industry partners but also those within the NPIC team and those working at GOSH that have supported this milestone achievement:
- Prof Neil Sebire (Lead Consultant, Professor of Pathology GOSH/ICH/UCL, Chief Research Information Officer, Clinical Informatics Research Programme Director
- Luis Campos Histopathology Laboratory Manager
- Ciaran Hutchinson Consultant Histopathologist
- Maria Reino Gomez Senior Specialist Biomedical Scientist
- Rob Salh ICT Senior Project Manager
- Nathan Lingaloo Head of Networks and Cyber Security
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.
Find out more about the NPIC Project here.
