Cancer patients could be spared the devastating consequences of their tissue samples being lost thanks to a new tracking system being tested in the NHS . The loss of tissue samples can mean vulnerable patients are forced to redo biopsies, therefore delaying diagnosis and treatment. Lost samples cost the NHS an estimated £157m in claims every year.
However, losing samples could soon be a thing of the past in the NHS , as one of the UK’s largest health trusts tests a new tracking system its inventors hope will lead to a rollout in hospitals worldwide. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which deals with tens of thousands of cancer cases every year, will trial a real-time tracking system for cancer tissue samples. The system is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that is widely used in the retail and logistics industry to track assets and has been specially adapted to help improve treatment for people with serious and life-threatening conditions.
Currently, when samples come in they are processed into blocks of paraffin wax which are cut into very thin slices for microscopic examination by histopathologists. The department at Leeds receives 60,000 cancer cases every year, generating more than 250,000 blocks and nearly one million slides. And cancer cases are expected to rise as a result of an ageing population.
Existing tracking systems can only provide historic information about where a sample has been, rather than its current location, and are vulnerab.