Beverley J Hunt^1
1Kings Healthcare Partners

One of the areas of laboratory haematology that takes up considerable time and skill is reporting on full blood counts and bone marrow aspirates. The time taken to train clinical and laboratory haematology staff to perform full blood count morphology and study bone marrow aspirates is also an issue.

Digital morphology offers a new way of analysing films and bone marrows in that looking at a digital slide rather than looking down a microscope enable films to be studied remotely, allow for the first time the ability for staff to work from home and saving time for a Clinical Haematologist to travel to and from their laboratory to review slides. 

A further development is to introduce AI to the digital scan so that a preliminary analysis can be performed. This is a project being undertaken by Scopio, a Tel Aviv company who we are working with to validate their programme. 

Where do we go in the future? There are issues such as malaria diagnosis where the process is time consuming – relying on the preparation of thick and think films and 10-20 minutes of a person’s time. After that species needs identifying, often difficult for a novice. This are would lend itself to an AI programme. More potential areas will be discussed

See Hematology & Full-Field Morphology | Scopio Labs