Following a formal tender process, Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust today announced the selection of Indica Labs to aid in full digitisation of the pathology workflow. Indica Labs will deliver its leading digital pathology software, HALO AP, fully integrated with existing hospital systems, alongside multiple Hamamatsu Nanozoomer scanners.

NUH, comprising two campuses, is the third largest NHS trust in England providing services to 2.5 million residents of Nottingham and a further 3 to 4 million in the surrounding region. The pathology department processes approximately 70,000 histological specimens and produces 340,000 slides per year.

Two years ago, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) and NUH NHS Trust founded the PathLAKE project in collaboration with other partners. PathLAKE is working to deliver innovative AI solutions needed in NHS pathology labs. Digitisation of the pathology workflow at NUH was made possible by PathLAKE Plus which is massively expanding digitisation across the NHS in order to put AI solutions developed by PathLAKE into practice.

Dr Tim Taylor, the Clinical Director of Pathology at NUH said, “We are really pleased that NUH has secured £2.3 million of funding from Innovate UK as part of a government initiative to develop digital pathology services across the NHS. This funding will allow our team of specialist consultant pathologists to move from analysing tissue biopsies using microscopes to using state of the art software from Indica Labs, reducing the time patients have to wait for diagnoses, particularly for those patients with suspected cancer. It will also allow our team of pathologists to work more collaboratively with pathologists in other Trusts across the region and opens the way to using sophisticated artificial intelligence tools to assist pathologists in the future through the PathLAKE Plus project.”

Indica Labs’ HALO AP software will be used to manage and view scanned slides for primary diagnosis, secondary consultations, tumour boards, multi-disciplinary team meetings, and remote reporting. To further streamline the digital reporting workflow, HALO AP will be integrated fully with the hospital’s existing laboratory information system, CliniSys WinPath. Finally, in line with the PathLAKE Plus mission, HALO AP is designed to deploy a broad array of AI tools developed via Indica Labs’ HALO AI platform, as well as third-party AI solutions.

“Digitization, automation, and AI can play a vital role in supporting pathologists to meet growing workloads and increasing diagnostic complexity,” said Founder and CEO of Indica Labs, Steven Hashagen. “Indica Labs is delighted to participate in this exciting initiative, and we are committed to helping the NUH NHS Trust, and the wider PathLAKE Plus consortium in realizing the promise of this technology.”

David Snead, Founding Director of PathLAKE, and consultant pathologist at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire said:
“UCHW NHS Trust is proud to be leading PathLAKE Plus, the world’s largest implementation of digital pathology and AI to date, which will deliver the benefits of AI across a population base of 17 million people.

“The ambition is to deliver digital pathology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the benefit of NHS patients. Digital pathology has already proved its worth during the pandemic, by allowing the remote working of pathologists. However, it paves the way for the implementation of emerging AI technologies that will ensure we deliver the best possible results for our patients.

“Digital pathology is the future for tissue diagnosis and offers myriad opportunities to improve the quality of care for patients, PathLAKE Plus will be realising these benefits over the coming months and years. We are grateful for the support of Indica Labs, one a team of commercial suppliers supporting PathLAKE Plus, that have made the project viable through their contribution.”

The PathLAKE Plus project has been supported by funding from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) data to early diagnosis challenge in 2018, alongside additional scale-up funding for the digital pathology and imaging AI programme from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).

About Indica Labs, Inc
Indica Labs is the world’s leading provider of computational pathology software and services. Our flagship HALO image analysis platform enables fast, quantitative evaluation of tissues using a broad range of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision algorithms. HALO Link and HALO AP facilitate remote image analysis, collaboration and management. Through a combination of precision, scalability, and usability our software solutions enable pharmaceutical companies, diagnostic labs, research organizations, and Indica’s own contract pharma services team to advance tissue-based research, clinical trials, and diagnostics. For more information, please visit https://www.indicalab.com or contact info@indicalab.com.

About Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust based in the heart of Nottingham and provide services to over 2.5 million residents of Nottingham and its surrounding communities. We also provide specialist services for a further 3-4 million people from across the region. We're one of the largest employers in the region, employing around 16,500 people at QMC, Nottingham City Hospital and Ropewalk House. We have 90 wards and around 1,700 beds.

We have a national and international reputation for many of our specialist services, including stroke, renal, neurosciences, cancer services and trauma. We are at the forefront of many research programmes and new surgical procedures.

In partnership with The University of Nottingham we host a Biomedical Research Centre carrying out vital research into hearing, digestive diseases, respiratory, musculoskeletal disease, mental health and imaging.

As a teaching trust we have a strong relationship with our colleagues at The University of Nottingham and other universities across the East Midlands, including Loughborough University, where we are part of the Olympic Legacy project. We play a vital role in the education and training of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Experts from NUH are leading the important work is in the NHS to establish appropriate sponsorship and project management of the National facility at the National Defence and Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall, a facility which has potential to very significantly improve inpatient rehabilitation services and clinical outcomes for patients in Nottingham and across the East Midlands