Fujifilm is venturing further into the digital pathology space through a new partnership with One Dorset Pathology Network, the two announced on Tuesday.
As part of the agreement, Fujifilm Digital Pathology Solutions will pilot its digital workflow for cellular pathology at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, a U.K.-based acute care institution. The ultimate goal is to expand the pathology workflow platform to healthcare sites in Poole and Dorset Counties, which together with Bournemouth help make up the Dorset network.
Eventually, 100% of the network’s slides will be digitized using a limited footprint.
“It is rare in histology that an opportunity comes up to truly reshape the service,” Ashley Ballard, senior biomedical scientist at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, said in an email statement. “But with the introduction of digital pathology and our partnership with Fujifilm we have the chance to radically change how things work for the future.”
The initial project will pilot a high-capacity scanner at Bournemouth’s hub laboratory, a low-capacity machine at the Dorset County location, workstations for all pathologists, along with AI, macro-imagers and voice recognition capabilities. Ballard says these new systems will attract skilled clinicians and vastly enhance productivity and turnaround times.
“We believe this approach offers a strong, flexible solution, with each partner offering expertise in their field and an open platform to deliver bespoke systems which can fully encompass the technologies required by modern pathology organizations,” Emma Hodgkinson, medical informatics sales at Fujifilm UK, said in the statement.
The partnership is Fujifilm’s first direct award from the new PathLAKE digital pathology initiative, according to the announcement. Supported and funded by the UK government, PathLAKE is one of five centers of excellence in digital pathology and medical imaging.
Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.