UK government approves digital pathology for cancer screening programmes

The UK government has approved the use of digital pathology in cancer screening programmes to speed up the analysis of cancer screening samples.

The approval follows positive results from a study led by experts at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

It also follows a consultation by the UK National Screening Committee last August, which endorsed the use of digital pathology for histopathology in bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening programmes.

Published in the journal Histopathology, researchers compared the use of digital pathology to using a microscope and found that digital pathology was equally as effective as using microscopes and slides for screening samples.

Histopathology is the examination of cells and tissues under a microscope and is a crucial step in several major disease pathways, specifically in cancer, where early detection is important for survival.

Digital pathology involves automated slide scanners to digitise the histopathology process, reporting on computer workstations as opposed to light microscopy and enabling pathologists to report samples from the laboratory producing slides.

In the study involving six NHS hospitals, pathologists reported on 2,024 anonymous samples within four cancer specialties: skin, breast, gastrointestinal and renal cancer. A total of 16,192 reports were created during the study.

Digital pathology helps to make sample sharing easier and reduces the risk of loss or damage to samples, while also mitigating the need for pathologists to be present in hospitals.

In clinical practice, digital pathology “enables many benefits to be realised, including the option to use artificial intelligence-based tools to support pathologists in their work,” said David Snead, lead researcher and consultant pathologist at UHCW and the University of Warwick.

Snead added: “It is a big milestone to achieve and we are extremely proud that the work we have led proved so effective in making this change.”

Professor Andrew Farmer, director of the NIHR’s Health Technology Assessment Programme, which funded the study, said: "This shows the crucial role research plays in providing key evidence to improve clinical practice and guide decision-making for those who plan and provide health and social care services."