The very first clinical installation of the Fina system for tissue block management took place 10 years ago at CHU Montpellier in France. The Fina system was developed as a solution to the problem of lost tissue samples in anatomic pathology (AP) laboratories. Thousands of tissue samples are lost in AP laboratories all over the world, and the impact can have devastating consequences for patients.
“Since implementing the Fina system in our laboratory 10 years ago, we always know where to find our samples, and sample management errors have been eliminated," said Professor Valerie Costes-Martineau, from CHU Montpellier (pictured above).
“We started Dreampath based on a mission and passion to protect patients. Losing samples is unacceptable, but before Fina was developed and released, there wasn’t a complete solution to the problem,” said Pablo Jordan, CEO and co-founder of Dreampath.
Since releasing Fina, Dreampath has also developed Crystal for the management of microscope slides, and Hydra for the management of tissue cassettes in the pre-processing step of the AP laboratory workflow. This three-system portfolio addresses critical points in the AP laboratory workflow where patient samples are frequently lost.
In addition to advancing patient safety, Dreampath solutions also equip AP laboratories to address the challenges presented by increasing cancer caseloads with decreasing availability of histotechnologist (HT) labour. Availability of HT labour is in decline globally while cancer incidence rates are growing. This presents AP laboratories with an urgent problem: doing more work with fewer resources.
“Without solutions to save time and reallocate labour toward value-added activities in the laboratory, patients will experience delayed diagnosis and treatment, so Dreampath systems are really a necessity in the AP laboratory,” said Valerie Wilhelm, Executive Vice-President of Research & Development and co-founder of Dreampath.