Today is International Pathology Day, a time to celebrate the invaluable contribution that our pathology and forensic and analytical sciences staff make to healthcare.

Did you know that almost 70% of med­ical deci­sions rely on pathol­o­gy? Pathol­o­gy plays an invalu­able role in the detec­tion, diag­no­sis and treat­ment of disease.

Staff work­ing in our lab­o­ra­to­ries are crit­i­cal to most aspects of clin­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing in hos­pi­tals and health­care set­tings. Whether it’s a rou­tine health screen, can­cer diag­no­sis, or blood dona­tion— patients depend on pathol­o­gy and our peo­ple are here for you at every stage of life.

Hav­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy to keep up with the grow­ing demands for diag­nos­tic tech­nol­o­gy is crit­i­cal to ensur­ing patients get time­ly care.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is invest­ing more than $29 mil­lion to upgrade chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy analy­sers across Syd­ney and region­al NSW, bring­ing in new lev­els of automa­tion and standardisation.

Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor and Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy Clin­i­cal Stream Lead Dr Mar­garet Janu said chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy has one of the high­est through­puts in pathol­o­gy testing.

“It’s high­ly auto­mat­ed and under­pins the crit­i­cal and urgent test­ing of blood spec­i­mens. Automa­tion is key to us being able to make best use of our people’s time and exper­tise, and this sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment is already pro­vid­ing faster, more effi­cient ser­vices,” Dr Janu said.

Mar­sha De Bono, Senior Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist at Con­cord Hos­pi­tal said the new equip­ment is already mak­ing a huge dif­fer­ence since it was installed ear­li­er this year.

“The new equip­ment is enhanc­ing the staff’s work­flow in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and stream­lin­ing pathol­o­gy test­ing, which are essen­tial for detect­ing, diag­nos­ing, and treat­ing dis­eases. Our team at Con­cord has suc­cess­ful­ly adapt­ed to the new work­flows, enabling them to deliv­er a high stan­dard of ser­vice to our patients,” Mar­sha said.

“The cur­rent equip­ment had reached its end of life, and replac­ing the high-vol­ume chem­istry and immunoas­say test­ing equip­ment now will ensure we con­tin­ue to deliv­er time­ly, reli­able test results to the local community.”

Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­fes­sor Rob Lin­de­man said it’s one of the biggest equip­ment replace­ment projects NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has ever undertaken.

“We’ve made great progress over the past 18 months,” he said.

“We have installed new chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy analy­sers at Blue Moun­tains, Lith­gow, Nepean, Bega, Moruya, Black­town, Mount Druitt, Can­ter­bury, Auburn, Goul­burn, Quean­beyan, Cooma, West­mead, Wol­lon­gong, Tumut, Mudgee, Wag­ga Wag­ga, Young, Orange, Bathurst, Forbes, RPA, Con­cord, Wal­gett and Bro­ken Hill.

“This week we go live at the brand-new lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Liv­er­pool Health and Aca­d­e­m­ic Precinct as well as Bourke. Look­ing ahead to the next six months, work is pro­gress­ing with upgrades being planned at Deniliquin, Rand­wick and Dub­bo,” Pro­fes­sor Lin­de­man said.

Thanks to the ded­i­ca­tion, exper­tise and effort of every­one from our lab­o­ra­to­ries teams, Clin­i­cal Oper­a­tions, ICT and Project Man­age­ment teams who are work­ing tire­less­ly on this impor­tant project.

Each lab has its own logis­tics and site-spe­cif­ic chal­lenges and dis­rup­tions to over­come (such as refer­ring spec­i­mens to oth­er near­by labs for test­ing while equip­ment is installed), but it’s been a great team effort to date. Well done everyone!

What is Chem­i­cal Pathology?

Chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy under­pins the care and man­age­ment of many com­mon conditions:

• High blood glu­cose lev­els can mean diabetes.
• Ele­vat­ed tro­ponin enzyme can indi­cate recent or cur­rent heart attack.
• Mea­sur­ing pro­teins in can­cer tumours can deter­mine if treat­ments are working.

NSW Health Pathology’s chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy teams help diagnose:

• infer­til­i­ty
• Cys­tic Fibro­sis in newborns
• kid­ney failure
• high cho­les­terol
• viral and bac­te­r­i­al infection
• thy­roid issues and more.

Chem­i­cal pathol­o­gists have com­plex clin­i­cal and lab­o­ra­to­ry skills need­ed to per­form bio­chem­i­cal tests on human body flu­ids and tissues.

They exam­ine blood, tis­sues and urine, and oth­er body flu­ids such as cere­brospinal fluid.

Changes in enzymes, pro­teins, elec­trolytes and oth­er sub­stances in these flu­ids and tis­sues give clues they need to diag­nose ill­ness and rec­om­mend patient care and treatment.

(Top image: staff at Tumut Laboratory)

Topics