The FINANCIAL — Royal Philips on July 9 announced that the Netherlands-based LabPON has become the first clinical pathology laboratory in the world to have transitioned completely to digital diagnosis. With this shift, all clinical histology cases are now being assessed and diagnosed digitally with the Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution instead of with a microscope, leading to improved laboratory efficiency, quality and service levels.
Pathology plays a critical role in disease detection, particularly with cancer diagnosis. Suspicious tissue samples are investigated through a microscope to determine if the tissue is malignant and consequently guides treatment decisions. As the largest pathology laboratory in the Netherlands, LabPON is consulted on more than 54,000 histological cases each year, which translates to more than 300,000 slides of human tissue. Each of these slides needs to be prepared, analyzed, diagnosed, reported and archived every year. Digitizing these images eases collaboration across sites, reducing costs. Improved cooperation also allows access to specialists, engendering multidisciplinary discussions to share expertise and knowledge to ultimately come to a better diagnosis for the patient, according to Philips.
“Transitioning our entire workflow to digital processes demonstrates our commitment to ensuring our patients and clinical colleagues receive the fastest, most effective and best informed diagnoses possible,” said Alexi Baidoshvili, pathologist, LabPON. “The revolutionary pathology solution from Philips provides us the images and speed we need, and their IT product seamlessly integrates with existing lab systems, while improving collaboration. Philips’ understanding of the needs of our pathologists has ensured their adoption and improved throughput.”
“Digitization of pathology offers a new way to tackle some of the growing challenges in the field, like higher cancer rates and the massive quantity of slides generated annually at these sites,” said Russell Granzow, General Manager, Philips Digital Pathology Solutions. “LabPON’s success in moving to entirely digital workflows emphasizes the role our solutions are playing across the health continuum to enable definitive diagnosis and improved patient care.”
LabPON, which has 17 pathologists and a total of 115 employees, is also partnering with two other major labs in the Netherlands – University Medical Center Groningen and Isala Klinieken in Zwolle – to form a virtual network that allows 49 pathologists to collaborate easily, share cases in a secured way, and directly set up consultations.
LabPON has been working toward this milestone with Philips since 2012, using a structured change management approach to full digital adoption by its pathologists. This makes LabPON and Philips a valuable resource seeking to help others in their digital transformation.
Philips is an innovator in health technologies to enhance patient care and cure from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. The company is a pioneer and leader in digital pathology, with a fast growing installed base and innovation partnerships with leading healthcare providers across the globe.
Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution is a new platform to help pathologists make that next step in workflow improvement and accelerate knowledge sharing between care providers. Digital pathology will open up new ways to get more information from tissue samples and connect with other diagnostic modalities. Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution is CE marked for primary diagnostics in the EU and Health Canada. In the U.S., Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution is cleared by FDA for diagnostic use in the evaluation of HER2 expression in breast cancer and is offered for research use (RUO).
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