The National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC) has announced a significant advancement in cancer diagnosis for West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Six NHS hospitals, serving a population of three million, are collaborating to introduce a cutting-edge digital pathology service that promises quicker cancer diagnoses, regardless of a patient’s proximity to specialist centres.
Traditionally, cancer diagnosis requires pathologists to examine tissue samples on glass slides under a microscope—a process that is often slowed by the need to transport these delicate slides between hospitals.
However, the new digital pathology system at the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) scans slides in ultra-high definition, allowing them to be securely shared with experts across the network instantly. This initiative is a major milestone in the NHS’s broader adoption of digital pathology.
Pathologists in the region are increasingly adopting digital pathology to provide faster patient diagnoses through the rapid and secure sharing of cases, optimising the use of pathology expertise in the six WYAAT hospitals. NPIC also highlights digital pathology as a key area for artificial intelligence, which could help pathologists speed up or enhance diagnoses.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, where NPIC is based, houses one of the UK’s largest digital pathology slide repositories and has been scanning every slide digitally since 2018.
The establishment of the WYAAT digital pathology network is a key element of NPIC’s mission to enhance cancer diagnostics across the region. The WYAAT project will scan over 750,000 slides annually.
In future, the broader NPIC project will see 238 pathologists using digital pathology in 40 hospitals across England, scanning over five million slides annually and generating more than seven petabytes of data each year.
