By Antonio Dey
The Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Mount Sinai Health Sys-tem of New York, USA yesterday unveiled a state-of-the-art Telepathology Laboratory at the George-town Public Hospital for World Cancer Day.
President Irfaan Ali, during his feature address, said that the facility was established at the most convenient period to champion World Cancer Day which was held under the theme “Close the Care Cap”. He noted that there was a gap between those who can afford cancer treatment and those who cannot. Additionally systems are designed which don’t allow people to benefit from the treatment of this ailment.
However, Ali said, Guyana will bridge this gap through partnerships with accredited healthcare institutions, like Northwell and Mount Sinai. He said that the use of technology through telepathology would serve as a bridge in this gap.
Telepathology involves image capturing which provides the pathologist with enough information to make a diagnosis. This could include biological tissue, blood smears, culture plates, and other data. Pathologists can use digital pathology via three primary systems: Static image-based systems, virtual-slide systems, and real-time systems.
Ali remarked, “Today we are seeing a scenario where we are utilising this tool of technology with Mount Sinai to close this gap which will make monumental changes in the delivery of quality healthcare from 30 days to between 24 hours and seven days.”
President Ali said his government has made major strides in improving the healthcare sector for the three years it has been in office, but admitted that there is still room for improvement as many of the services offered at Guyana’s premier medical institution are substandard.
He said that there must be no shortcut in developing services at primary healthcare institutions, which was why the government partnered with accredited healthcare institutes such as Mount Sinai and Northwell to aid this development.
“We are not satisfied with the level of service we get every day at GPHC, but despite those challenges there are supporting pillars at the health care institution who are willing to surmount these challenges, just imagine if there are no supporting pillars then the health care system would suffer tremendously,” he said.
“We have one added problem which is external to Georgetown Public Hospital which is the blockade in front of the hospital and this affects the delivery of good healthcare at the Georgetown Hospi-tal and we need to recognize how detrimental this situation is for the delivery of good health care at this facility.”
The President acknowledged that all public servants, especially teachers, nurses and doctors who go above and beyond the call of duty deserve a quality life. He vowed that the government will be developing a comprehensive support system to ensure that healthcare workers and other public servants enjoy better living standards.
“I will ensure that you live the best possible life and you enjoy the fruits of your labour, and just know that we are on that journey of delivering to you that package,” he said.
Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony noted that the public hospital will be able to extend a range of services through the telepathology lab.
“…We realised that persons have to be tested for various diseases and if we are going to advance the treatment of cancer in Guyana then it’s not just about doing the imaging, but we need to make sure that we can do the various types of testing to differentiate the types of cancers,” he said.
“When we do this, we will know which one would be more responsive to which type of treatment and once we can do that, then we will have better outcomes.”
The telepathology laboratory will offer a range of hormonal and histopathology tests, especially for breast cancer patients, which was never offered before, Anthony highlighted.
“One of the good things that we can do is mammograms and ultrasounds. But now we will be able to do things like HDR to receptors and a whole host of other types of testing that will be done at this lab,” he added.
Anthony said that the lab will allow high-resolution images to be taken of the samples and sent to a pathologist for a diagnosis.
“So, this is a service that we will introduce starting from early [this] year because we have all the elements in place. It’s just starting the service so that would also improve the turnaround time in terms of diagnosing cancer patients,” he said.
“This digital pathology lab also allows us to prepare the slides here, take an image of it and then we can send them off to Mount Sinai so that the pathologist would be able to review the slides and give us a second opinion if that is necessary.
“And that is a very important thing for us. Because we want to make sure that when we present the diagnosis we have an accurate diagnosis. The turnaround time not so long ago when you took a sample of biopsy and you sent it to our lab here, it probably took between three to six months to get those results. We have been able to reduce that to about seven days and that is the purpose of the lab”.
Anthony also revealed that there are surgeons at the lab who will be able to detect the severity of an ailment in phases.
With telepathology, the surgeon would be able to say if a case is malignant or not, based on the images uploaded.
He disclosed that he will be working with Mount Sinai and other renowned healthcare institutions to implement mechanisms which can store electronic records.
“We have had 16 companies that bid to come in to do electronic health records with us. We have reduced that to about four. They are now setting up their software and we have a team of experts who will be reviewing the different systems and advising us on which one we should see. Mount Sinai is part of that panel and they are the head of electronic records and have been working closely with us to make sure that we have the best systems in place,” he revealed.
Chief Executive Officer of GPHC Robbie Rambarran lauded the government for the initiative, noting that the lab will indeed reduce disparities in cancer detection and diagnosis.
Rambarran remarked, “… With this new lab, a conducive environment, more trained staff. We aim to achieve a turnaround time for routine tests in 48 hours and urgent tests within 24 hours.”
Chief Transformation Officer of Mount Sinai Health System Arthur Gianelli and World Bank Group Resident Representative for Guyana and Suriname Diletta Doretti expressed pleasure at being able to assist Guyana in transforming its health care sector through the introduction of telepathology.
The World Bank funded the laboratory equipment which amounted to $356.3 million, while the total cost of the project, including rehabilitation of the building and Information Technology infrastructure amounted to $474.6 million.
