Fraser
Health Authority
Fraser Health Authority (FHA) delivers acute care
services through 12 hospitals distributed across a wide geography. Four
centralized pathology service centers process specimens sent by providers at
the other eight acute care hospitals, as well as physician offices.
Fraser implemented Apollo for its
telepathology project. The scope of the project is focused on supporting
digital imaging to provide a solution for the remote diagnosis of
intraoperative consultations, decreasing the amount of inter-hospital travel.
The business objective is to utilize telepathology in process integration into
Anatomic Pathology, Hematology and Microbiology as part of Fraser’s strategic
eHealth initiative.
In order to provide frozen section
tissue interpretation for intraoperative consultations, pathologists based at
Royal Columbian Hospital would have to drive to one of four possible surgery
locations, which could take as long as one hour. Whereas this transportation
lag time is acceptable for routine specimen analysis, faster diagnosis must be
accomplished during surgery.
Fraser Health implemented a
comprehensive system from Apollo in order to enable location-independent
digital pathology. Apollo’s solution enables a pathologist at a FHA network
computer to view live video of gross tissue specimens and scanned whole slide
microscopic images to make a preliminary diagnosis from a remote location. For
remote gross specimen analysis and dissection, a centralized pathologist
interacts with an onsite Histotechnologist verbally via the telephone and
visually via live video imaging.
Regional,
Cross-Jurisdictional Telepathology Project
A large regional cross jurisdictional
telepathology project to support
pathology consults and conference. The project successfully implemented a telepathology network that
connected remote sites to urban centers with access to whole slide scan images,
microscopic and gross images, and supporting back matter documents.
Multi-State
Digital Pathology Network
Apollo’s
solution is used by a large national network of hospitals to provide
conferences, remote secondary consults, education, rounds and tumor boards
utilizing a number of imaging devices including whole slide scanners, robotic
microscopes with streaming video, gross imaging and streaming video.
Apollo
arccMobile and Asynchronous Telemedicine
Apollo’s
arccMobile application allows clinicians to capture photos, videos, and audio
clips of patients and have them linked to the patient’s EMR record.
Clinicians can be notified of the pending status for an encounter. The app
is available for both Android and iOS and supports “unsolicited” orders so no
prior order needs to be entered into the EMR or other system. The solution can
be configured to support direct patient upload of photos, videos, and audio
clips supporting asynchronous telemedicine.
