North Bristol NHS Trust and Fujifilm Healthcare Europe are to continue their long-standing relationship, with the establishment of a reference site agreement for the UK featuring the Synapse Pathology solution to support Bristol’s innovative histology practice.
This will be Fujifilm Healthcare Europe’s first reference site for SYNAPSE Pathology and Synapse Pathology Gateway across Europe. This partnership underscores a commitment to advancing digital pathology practices and improving patient care through innovative diagnostic technologies.
The partnership first began in February 2022 and has continued to grow, supporting North Bristol NHS Trust in its implementation of digital pathology to meet the ever-growing NHS turnaround targets. As part of the reference site agreement, Bristol will continue to partner with Fujifilm to assist in the development of the Synapse Pathology solution offering. This includes adoption of new related solutions such as Synapse Pathology Gateway – a modular offering that has enabled Bristol to implement data analytics, IMS reporting and AI functionality (in partnership with IBEX Medical Analytics) and digitalised automatic outsourcing of whole slide images with Source LDPath.
“Partnering with North Bristol NHS Trust as a reference site allows us to showcase the real-world applications and benefits of our Synapse Pathology solution, setting a new standard in digital diagnostics enhancing our support for histopathology. I’m delighted to continue our relationship with the Cellular Pathology team at North Bristol and we’re excited to expand on our joint achievements,” commented Kayleigh Patterson, Product and Release Manager – Digital Pathology UK, Fujifilm Healthcare UK.
Synapse Pathology solution has been developed as a complete end-to-end digital pathology solution, designed on the principles of openness, interoperability and to enable high-throughput clinical environments. Proven to deliver digital images for diagnosis 1.7 hours faster than glass sides, while increasing collaboration and communication, Synapse Pathology solution has an open-platform, vendor-neutral approach to support pathology services with an efficient, robust and cost-effective proposition.
The Cellular Pathology Department at North Bristol NHS Trust receives cases from NBT and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, with all histology samples processed at the NBT site. The main histology laboratory currently utilises eight Hamamatsu slide scanners and outputs more than 500,000 slides per annum, generating 800TB of data.
“We are thrilled to continue our collaboration with FUJIFILM Healthcare as a reference site for the Synapse Pathology solution, which will continue to significantly enhance our diagnostic capabilities, output, and patient care,” commented Mark Orrell, Operations Manager for Cellular Pathology at North Bristol NHS Trust. “We are honoured to be able to work closely with FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe and help pioneer the global leading Digital Pathology software provider.”