Learn about Insel Gruppe’s experience with Scopio for peripheral blood smears and bone marrow aspirates

“…We can discuss cells like we’re in the same room.”

Myriam Legros is the head technician for Insel Gruppe AG at University Hospital in Bern, Switzerland. She and her team review up to 60 peripheral blood smear (PBS) slides every day and up to 25 bone marrow aspirate (BMA) sample slides, supporting both internal hospital needs and samples coming in from nearby hospitals and physicians. Her lab recently adopted Scopio technology to replace an older system, deploying the Scopio X100 and X100HT platforms for PBS and BMA imaging.

As the lab completes the validation phase, its 23 technicians and seven physicians have already been trained on the Scopio system.

The Scopio team recently spoke with Myriam about her lab’s experience so far with Full-Field technology and remote collaboration.

Scopio: How did you first learn about Scopio Full-Field technology?

ML: My first contact with Scopio was during a hematology training where we reviewed a case using a Full-Field image. Some time later, when the contract for our previous digital platform came up for renewal, we recognized that we weren’t happy with the system because it only provided individual cell images and not the whole picture.

I remembered having seen that Full-Field scan during the training, so I reached out to my colleagues at St. Gallen who were already using Scopio. They told me about their experience and workflows, so I contacted Scopio and got a response right away.

Scopio: Other than the opportunity to see Full-Field images, were there other features that contributed to your decision?

ML: We liked the idea of having one system for both peripheral blood and bone marrow aspirates as well as for both diagnostics and case reports. It’s very easy to scan a sample and use the image to demonstrate a case.

 

Scopio: How did training go?

ML: We did the PBS training on-site and the BMA training online and got all the information we needed to use the system and to make adaptations where we could.

We’ve now completed connection to our LIS, and we’re finishing up validation. We have regular meetings with Scopio to get our questions answered, which is very useful.

Scopio: Are there features you’ve found particularly valuable so far?

ML: Being able to mark and comment on images and individual cells is very useful. It makes it easy to consult with a physician remotely on a special case, because you can identify a cell and ask “is this a blast or not?,” for example, and have a discussion just like we’re in the same room. That’s a really good feature.

Coming from our old single-cell system to the Full-Field environment, we like that we can now look at slides and see everything as though through a microscope. It’s only in rare cases (like MDS with maturation failure) where we sometimes want to verify what we see by reviewing it on the microscope. In most cases we just use Scopio.

And already, weekend and night shift staff have discovered they can share scans with me for a second opinion because they know I have my laptop at home!

Learn more about fully digital, remote-accessible digital PBS and BMA analysis.