UHN to enhance its use of digital pathology

TORONTO – FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas Corporation, a leading provider of diagnostic and enterprise imaging solutions, will digitize the pathology departments of three healthcare organizations, including the University Health Network (UHN), UVA Health, and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Synapse Pathology is a comprehensive pathology PACS solution that streamlines case management through proprietary advances in image digitization to accelerate case turnaround time and is the only FDA-cleared pathology solution for primary diagnosis with multiple scanners.

“Anatomic pathology completes 350 million tests in the US annually alone, including critical diagnoses like cancer. Yet, despite massive volumes of critical patient work, pathologists have used the same tools for decades: microscopes and glass slides,” said Mark Lloyd, PhD, vice president, pathology, FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas Corporation.

“We’re on a mission to disrupt the current cancer diagnostic practice by making digital pathology the norm, and we’re gratified to collaborate with the following healthcare organizations to support precision cancer diagnostics for their patients and pathologists.”

UHN is Canada’s largest research hospital, spanning three acute care hospitals in Toronto, Ontario. The scope of research and complexity of cases at UHN has made it a national and international source for research, education and patient care, and it was named Canada’s top research hospital by Research Infosource for seven consecutive years.

UHN is home to Canada’s largest hospital diagnostic lab and one of the world’s largest academic labs, conducting 30 million tests annually and serving 1,300 patients daily. UHN has chosen Synapse Pathology for its digital transformation project, leveraging its extensive capabilities to digitize more than 1.5 million slides reviewed by 60 pathologists annually.

“UHN’s transformative shift to digital pathology will enhance our ability to provide patients with more precise diagnoses and personalized treatment plans. With streamlined workflows, remote collaboration, and advanced image analysis, we are poised to deliver higher-quality patient care and drive cutting-edge research,” said Dr. George Yousef (pictured), program medical director, Laboratory Medicine Program, University Health Network.

UVA Health, ranked the number one children’s hospital in Virginia by the US News and World Report, secured Synapse Pathology for its 700-bed academic healthcare center. The solution will digitize and streamline image and data access for the health system’s more than 300,000 pathology slides for nearly 50,000 Virginians and more than 1.7 million imaging studies performed annually across its four hospital locations.

Boston Children’s Hospital is ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. It is home to the world’s largest pediatric research enterprise, and it is the leading recipient of pediatric research funding from the National Institutes of Health. It is the primary pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School and treats more children with rare diseases and complex conditions than any other hospital.

An existing Synapse PACS, Synapse 3D, and Synapse VNA customer, Boston Children’s Hospital expanded its Fujifilm product lineup to include Synapse Pathology because of the company’s proven successful experience in bi-directional integration with EPIC Beaker, as well as the company’s agnostic approach with scanners, AI and Image Analysis solutions.

Synapse Pathology uses whole slide images from multiple scanning vendors to create a comprehensive solution for digital pathology across laboratories, allowing healthcare organizations to realize the benefits of workflow efficiencies, centralized imaging records, and enterprise-wide access to images for all clinicians.

Synapse Pathology has an intuitive user interface to put the tools each pathologist needs at their fingertips. It includes an online digital assistant to help pathologists navigate case information and presents tools for measurements, annotations, collaboration, and messaging.