Almost half a billion dollars will be invested in NSW Health Pathology’s new statewide hub at Westmead Hospital, delivering new and enhanced pathology services for the people of Sydney and regional NSW.

The announce­ment was made dur­ing a vis­it to the West­mead lab­o­ra­to­ry this week by the NSW Pre­mier Chris Minns, along­side the Min­is­ter for Health and Region­al Health Ryan Park.

The fund­ing will be includ­ed in the upcom­ing June state bud­get and rep­re­sents the sin­gle largest injec­tion of funds in pathol­o­gy infra­struc­ture in recent times.

In addi­tion to the new build for the Insti­tute of Clin­i­cal Pathol­o­gy and Med­ical Research (ICPMR), the invest­ment will also deliv­er an upgrade to the high secu­ri­ty PC4 bio­con­tain­ment lab­o­ra­to­ry at West­mead – the only one of its kind in the state.

This PC4 lab­o­ra­to­ry tests, iso­lates and con­ducts research on high-risk pathogens that have the poten­tial to be a major infec­tion threat to the wider com­mu­ni­ty such as measles, influen­za, and COVID-19, as well as glob­al threats such as Ebola.

Built in 1978 with min­i­mal refur­bish­ment since, the West­mead lab­o­ra­to­ries con­duct 10,000 pathol­o­gy-relat­ed tests every day.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Chief Exec­u­tive Vanes­sa Janis­sen says the labs at West­mead are no longer fit-for-purpose.

“It’s an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to design land­mark pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ries that will serve the rapid­ly grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties in West­ern Syd­ney region and offer inte­grat­ed sup­port for all our lab­o­ra­to­ries right across NSW,” Ms Janis­sen said.

“The Statewide Hub will be designed to enhance future-ready diag­nos­tic ser­vices, bol­ster our pub­lic health response and pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness, and advance cut­ting-edge med­ical research and train­ing,” she said.

“This will be a turn­ing point in how we deliv­er pathol­o­gy ser­vices across NSW. It pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­talise on rapid advance­ments in new and emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy for this site and across our oth­er lab­o­ra­to­ries as we con­tin­ue to work as an inte­grat­ed net­work of laboratories.”

NSW Health Pathology’s Direc­tor of ICPMR West­mead, Prof David Brown says the state-of-the-art pathol­o­gy hub will be the largest pub­lic pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry in NSW.

“It will har­ness the pow­er of automa­tion and robot­ics pro­vid­ing 10,000 crit­i­cal clin­i­cal results every day to med­ical teams, ensur­ing they have fast access to qual­i­ty diag­nos­tic infor­ma­tion to inform time­ly treat­ment of patients.

“This is about ensur­ing every patient receives the right test, at the right time with the right result.”

The Statewide Hub will enhance the speed and accu­ra­cy of diag­no­sis for can­cer patients with cut­ting-edge dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy pro­vid­ing access to world lead­ing spe­cial­ist pathol­o­gists across the state. It will enable pre­ci­sion med­i­cine at scale for NSW.

It will accel­er­ate the adop­tion of cut­ting-edge genomics sequenc­ing capa­bil­i­ties that will ensure NSW patients have access to per­son­alised treat­ments based on their needs.

The Hub will enhance NSW Health Pathology’s research and inno­va­tion capa­bil­i­ties, sup­port­ing vital test­ing for access to clin­i­cal tri­als and crit­i­cal part­ner­ships in trans­la­tion­al research with Local Health Dis­tricts and universities.

It will also be the launch­pad for future med­ical lead­ers with train­ing for pathol­o­gists and sci­en­tists ensur­ing NSW attracts and retains the next gen­er­a­tion of world lead­ing health­care professionals.

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