Bradford Pathology receives funding to develop China-UK remote digital pathology system

Dr Betmouni, Director of Clinical Pathology, has been awarded funding to develop a China-UK digital pathology network. The 2-year, £400K project is a partnership with Huayin Medical Laboratory Centre, Guangzhou, China. The overall programme management and China-UK liaison is being provided by the UK-China Open Innovation team, based at the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Bradford.

The project will develop and evaluate a digital pathology platform to enable international exchange of knowledge and diagnostic pathology expertise. It aims to promote diagnostic pathology collaboration between the UK Histopathology community and China; also co-developing histopathology training and quality assessment programmes. This project builds on an existing partnership with Royal Philips to promote greater understanding and adoption of digital pathology as a primary diagnostic tool. It will also contribute to the Digital Diagnostics theme within the university’s Digital Health Enterprise Zone: focussed on technology-enhanced detection, diagnosis and monitoring of disease associated markers.

Dr Betmouni said: “This is a very exciting opportunity to work with colleagues in China to develop a digital pathology platform that will support international diagnostic collaboration. Our joint work has the potential to deliver improved training, consultation on difficult diagnostic cases and it will provide us with a wealth of opportunities to harness the power of digital pathology in data mining and automated diagnostics.”

Prof. Yongjian Deng, Deputy Director of Huayin Pathology Diagnosis Centre said: “We are delighted to be working with the University of Bradford on this exciting collaboration. Our vision is of an international connected pathology community, enabled to provide rapid, accurate and cost-effective diagnosis of disease using the best information technology available. We believe this collaboration represents an important step, enhancing Huayin as a global telepathology hub, and providing reciprocal benefits to patients in China, in the UK and in our expanding network of partner countries.”