In a recent webinar: "Making Science Out of Art, Digitization, and Context in Full Field Morphological Hematology", one of the world’s leading experts in hematology provided her perspective on the integration of digital blood sample review and expertise, presenting three fascinating case studies that illustrate how the art and science of diagnostic hematology can work together for the good of patients.
Seven solutions: How the most innovative hematology labs are tackling their top threats.
Hematology laboratories around the world face similar operational and organizational challenges. A shrinking workforce, increasing testing volumes and case complexity, and manual processes are among the virtually universal barriers to efficiency and quality service.
When the medical field first began talking about digital pathology, everyone seemed to naturally gravitate to surgical pathology. But cytopathology, microbiology, and other “ologies” got left behind. So, while tissue pathology reached the digital age, hematopathology and, specifically, bone marrow test procedures, remained frustratingly analog.
Nearly a quarter of all hematology labs analyze more than 100 peripheral blood smears (PBS) every day, yet the vast majority are still performed manually using an optical microscope. That disturbing statistic is just one creating a growing crisis in the hematology lab. In the age of widespread digitization in healthcare and across industries, hematology laboratory procedures are falling behind. And it's that misalignment that planted the seeds of Scopio Labs.
One of the key reasons why Scopio Labs' technology is so important for society is its potential to improve access to healthcare. Traditional blood tests require highly trained personnel, making them inaccessible to many people, particularly in rural or underserved areas that lack expert personnel on-site.
Tele-hematology is a burgeoning field, in part because the necessities spurred by the pandemic allowed fields like hematology to progress significantly and made remote workflows like tele-hematology an inevitable path forward. Remote view and analysis of scans provides experts with greater flexibility, allows for collaboration and consultation with experts around the world, and improves the overall efficiency of laboratory workflows. Here’s a recap of a recent interview on the topic with Scopio CTO Erez Na’aman by Labiotech.
Tech news site Calcalist recently spoke with Scopio’s co-founder about how Scopio streamlines the hematologic diagnostic process while rendering blood lab microscopes obsolete. Here are some highlights of the convo.
Something like 70% of today’s medical decisions depends on laboratory test results, and clinical laboratories therefore play an absolutely essential role in today’s healthcare system. Yet the most common hematology lab tests like the peripheral blood smear review are still mainly conducted manually with a microscope. They require classifying and counting cells by type and hunting for abnormalities. Does it work? Sure. Is it the best we can do? Not by a long shot. This method is labor intensive, time-consuming, requires continuous staff training, and is subject to relatively large inter-observer variability
But, what if this high-resolution, large-scale cell morphology was no longer a fantasy? What if instead of being forced to sacrifice field of view or resolution, you could see the big picture and the tiniest details at the exact same time? Enter, Full-Field Cell Morphology.
While microscopes are crucial in disease diagnosis, their function is limited. These instruments have an intrinsic trade-off between the field of view and the image resolution. In a fully digital workflow solution for diagnostic laboratories, the limitations of manual microscopy are overcome. This primarily means that laboratory experts no longer need to choose between the field of view and resolution, and can see both simultaneously.
