Six NHS hospitals now fully live with NPIC digital pathology system

Six NHS hospitals in the north of England have gone live with “digitised pathology departments” underpinned by the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC).

The NPIC digital pathology system went live in April 2024 within the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT), a collaborative of six NHS trusts serving some three million people in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.

Described by Leeds Teaching Hospitals as “one of the largest IT projects the NHS has embarked upon in over 20 years,” the service allows WYAAT member trusts to access NPIC’s digital pathology system, which enables clinicians to scan slides in ultra-high definition and access “instant, secure sharing with experts across the network”.

Craig Sayers, consultant histopathologist at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Since implementing NPIC digital pathology, we have seen increased efficiency in local MDT (multi-disciplinary team) preparation.

“The time required for secretarial and laboratory staff to retrieve glass slides and for Consultants to review cases has decreased.

“Referrals for second opinions and central MDT reviews, common between WYAAT Trusts, are now easier without needing to transport physical slides. At the Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, all Consultant Histopathologists have embraced digital reporting.

“With our histology slides now digitised, we look forward to trialing and implementing AI solutions to further improve turnaround times, especially for cancer cases”.

WYAAT comprises Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

Over the past three years, the NPIC project has also seen the deployment of 15 new Leica Biosystems scanners and the development of “the world’s largest” digital pathology vendor neutral archive (VNA) within WYAAT.

High-speed network infrastructure has also been rolled out to support data-intensive digital pathology workloads, including 29 petabytes — or around 30.4 million gigabytes — of “mirrored storage” across two data centres.

Darren Treanor, programme director at NPIC and consultant pathologist professor at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, said: “World leading technology is now available in West Yorkshire to accelerate cancer diagnosis.

“As a specialist cancer centre, we receive hundreds of patients’ samples per month from hospitals in the region, with typically 10-day delays.

“Now, an image can be shared securely in an instant – two experts can even look at a digital image of the same slide, at the same time”.

NPIC, which was founded in 2019 with a £10.1m investment from UK Research and Innovation, aims to eventually cover 40 hospitals in England.

The network also plans to develop artificial intelligence tools to help diagnose cancer and other diseases.

Bash Hussain, deployment director at NPIC, said: “Implementing digital pathology is a major transformation project for pathology departments. Successful deployment across the WYAAT network represents a major milestone for cancer diagnostics in the region”.

Among the suppliers for the NPIC digital pathology service is Sectra, which also supplies its picture archiving and communication system and VNA to the Greater Manchester Imaging Network.