Technological Transformation — In this digital era, it comes as a shock to discover that critical diagnoses of life-threatening diseases such as cancer still depend on what a pathologist sees on a glass slide under the lens of a microscope. This process, which also involves paper files, has not evolved very much in more than a century, but soon it will change radically.

“Pathologists make the definitive diagnosis in the continuum of cancer care,” said GE Healthcare’s Luigi Gentile at GE’s Pathology Innovation Centre of Excellence (PICOE) at the MaRS facility in Toronto. “It’s a pivotal step, but the process involves an analog, glass-and-paper system when all around it the health-care environment is going digital.”

While digital imaging has been used by pathologists since the 1980s, slow scanner speeds, huge file sizes and overburdened IT networks within hospitals meant that viewing, sharing and storing the images was costly and slow. It also made consulting with a geographically distant specialist difficult.

At the same time, medical researchers were making breakthroughs in the identification of many different types of cancers, the recognition of genetic predispositions and the evaluation of the effectiveness of different treatments. The problem was this ever-increasing wealth of specialized digital knowledge was not easily accessible by the pathologists making the diagnoses.

Removal of a Bottleneck

That digital-analog bottleneck was finally removed through a clinical trial by a multidisciplinary team at PICOE collaborating with medical and IT specialists at the University Health Network, a leading center for research and advanced patient care.

In spring 2013, both Health Canada and regulators in the European Union approved the GE Omnyx integrated digital pathology system (IDP).

“It’s a game changer,” said PICOE’s Gentile. “It makes it much easier and faster to connect different types of specialist expertise and develop the best medical solution for that individual patient.”

At the core of the Omnyx IDP system is an enterprisewide IT network architecture. For the first time, pathologists can access, analyze and share diagnostic images with colleagues and specialists — no matter where they are physically. This means that the diagnostic needs of patients in remote locations can be better served by the expertise of specialized pathologists in larger medical centers.

Key to achieving regulatory approval for the IDP system was a beta test of the system at Toronto’s University Health Network and the Timmins and District Hospital (TDH), a regional health-care center in a mining community 700 km north of Toronto.

Collaborative Innovation

“The question was could we manage TDH’s entire pathology workload remotely from Toronto? And the answer was yes,” reported PICOE’s Gentile. “The test period involved more than 3,000 patients and over 20,000 slides. We were able to focus the expertise of 27 different specialized pathologists to help diagnose the medical issues of patients in Timmins. Our success is a credit to the quality of science and the collaborative nature of medical innovation both here and in Timmins.”

PICOE was established in 2011 as a result of a $17.2 million partnership between GE Healthcare and clinical leaders in Toronto, with financial support from the Ontario government. PICOE’s mandate is to stay on the leading edge of GE’s corporatewide “healthymagination” drive to find innovative solutions to global healthcare needs.

“Innovation is about understanding critical challenges around the world and drawing on the best expertise needed to create the solution,” said Peter Robinson, vice president and general manager, GE Healthcare Canada. “PICOE is not about throwing technology at a problem. This is about changing the basic business model to consistently drive better results in patient care and health-care services.”

GE Healthcare’s groundbreaking IDP system is now available across Canada and Europe. Interest is building quickly.

“We’ve been very fortunate to work with a very innovative team here,” Gentile said. “The expertise of these medical researchers has made it possible for us to have a global impact on improving patient care.”