For NHS Trusts and healthcare bodies across Europe, making the move to digital pathology has been a huge undertaking, but there is still much to learn. There’s a risk that planning ahead, especially with a view to the size and type of storage required, could be forgotten about as purchasers look to get the best short-term deals, says Imogen Fitt.
Pathology departments in the UK are amongst the most sophisticated worldwide, thanks to an abundance of public funding and a willingness from the workforce to invest in advanced technologies. So, for a laboratory outsider it may seem strange that compared to departments such as radiology and cardiology which are already fully digitised, most pathologists are still diagnosing many of their cases using an analogue microscope.
The digital pathology (DP) market has in recent years benefited from a spike in adoption of scanner, software and associated DP service revenues (Figure 2) but as the COVID-19 pandemic has eased, it has become clear that this rapid shift to accommodate remote workflows in lockdown environments has not (yet) been translated to full-scale digital diagnosis.
A mountain of changes
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