Project Lead(s): Dan Hosseinzadeh
Issue
In 2008, the American Cancer Society reported that 60% of cancer cases in Africa – equal to 426,000 cases annually – led to death from preventable forms of cancer.
Further investigation implicated poor pathology as a causal factor in the high mortality rates, with a shortage of expert pathologists and the lack of training for local pathologists being main causative factors.
Solution
The goal of the project was to provide an accessible and cost-effective telepathology system for training local experts in pathology and diagnostic support, through remote access to global expertise.
The telepathology system that Pathcore developed is called "Pathcore Web".
Pathcore Web enables pathologists to easily collaborate between hospitals, manage whole-slide pathology images and help provide remote diagnostics.
It uses a case-based system to easily organize images and manages patient information, as well as other important metadata related to the slides, such as pathology reports.
Pathcore worked with Dr. Darlington Obaseki at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) to deploy Pathcore Web to train pathologists and support diagnostics in under-served regions.
Pathcore Web can be used to connect African pathologists to specialists around the world and to provide teaching material to educate local pathologists, increasing their ability to diagnose cancers more accurately and at earlier stages.
Outcome
The project showed that it is feasible and practical to build a pathology platform to increase the capacity of healthcare workers in developing countries using telepathology.
As a result of the project, 23 pathologists and 100 medical students from UBTH had access to Pathcore Web platform, with more than 900 cancer cases spanning 30 different cancers.
This unique dataset contains more than 500 gigabytes of image data, diagnostic reports and patient information, and was made available to the pathologists and medical students for self-study.
UBTH currently has eight pathologists, 15 residents and approximately 100 medical students.
The team estimated that 3,150 cancer patients received more accurate, timely and lifesaving diagnoses. Based on the caseload at UBTH, they estimated that 7,000 lives were improved and that UBTH pathologists benefited from self-study and opportunities to enhance their knowledge.
The team was interested in applying for Transition To Scale Phase II funding.
Their future plans relate to expanding the pilot telepathology project in Nigeria. This would involve working with academic pathology centres to develop high-quality training materials, measure improvements in diagnostic accuracy and impact on patient outcomes in Nigeria, and create a network of pathologists for diagnostic support.