New provincial funding is carrying promises of cutting down wait times for cancer diagnoses – specifically for those in more rural communities.
B.C.’s Jobs Minister Brenda Bailey made the announcement around new digital pathology testing on Monday (July 15), alongside Taleeb Noormohamed, MP for Vancouver Granville and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
“When fully implemented, digital pathology will enable a pathologist anywhere in B.C. to review these digital images, eliminating the need for transporting slides across the province,” Dr. Kim Chi, chief medical officer and head of B.C. Cancer, said.
Currently, all cancer tests require the physical examination of tissue samples under a microscope, a process that can take days but sometimes weeks if the patient lives in rural parts of B.C. where there is no local or regional testing facilities.
“In 2023, there were a total of 27,500 pathology cases across Northern Health,” Chi said. “This represents more than 155,000 glass slides with over 50 per cent of those slides needing to be transported to off-side pathologists.”
Gang Wang, a pathologist with the B.C. Cancer Centre, described pathologists as medical detectives, whose timely and accurate findings determine treatment. Analyzing tissue samples is already time-consuming and waiting for samples to be shipped for testing can not only increase the agony of patients as they wait for results, but also delay treatment, Wang said.
“This speed can be life-saving,” he said, adding that technologically modernized options like this help reduce inequities in the province’s health care system.
“Digital pathology ensures that the patients in the remote areas have the same access to the high-quality diagnostic services as those in urban centres,” he said.
“This democratization of health care means that every patient benefits from specialized pathology services regardless of location.”
Digital pathology, once fully realized, would also allow medical professionals to analyze cancer in ways previously unavailable, Chi added, which could in-turn allow more personalized treatment models.
The new testing will be jointly funded by the province and federal governments, to the tune of $2.65 million. The testing will be facilitated under the umbrella of Provincial Laboratory Medicine Services, a program of the Provincial Health Services Authority.
Daric Cloud Solutions, a Vancouver-based company, is providing the technology for the pilot.
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