OREANDA-NEWS.  GE Healthcare announced today that Clarient Diagnostic Service, Inc., a GE Healthcare company, has made significant upgrades to its fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) technologies to improve virtual analysis of testing results for a variety of blood diseases, including leukemia, lymphoma, myelodysplastic syndrome and myeloma. As part of these upgrades, a new service known as PATHSiTE™ Virtual HemeFISH (VHF), will be offered as an integrated component of the web-based case management portal. PATHSiTE VHF will help pathologists to better interpret, diagnose and report on suspected blood cancers and disorders.

“GE Healthcare has invested significantly to ensure our services are cutting-edge and among the best available in the industry,” said Cindy Collins, CEO, Clarient Diagnostics Services. “The new VHF service will help pathologists provide better diagnoses, enhancing the care provided to patients. Simultaneously, we have upgraded all of our leukemia and lymphoma panels to further improve sensitivity and specificity and simplify the pathologists’ experience. In clinical practice, it is vital to provide an accurate, complete and timely diagnosis in order to treat patients appropriately and these improvements will help pathologists achieve this.”

The VHF solution is the latest innovation in digital pathology, combining an intuitive viewer with the case management and reporting power of PATHSiTE to create a technology that will change the way pathologists read, interpret and report on suspected hematologic malignancies. It allows pathologists to review FISH tests and manage cases remotely, streamline workflow with tools to review, classify, filter and approve each cell, and use a comprehensive reporting tool to create professional, user-branded reports.

Clarient provides pathologists and oncologists with access to diagnostic tests that shed light on the complex nature of various cancers by combining innovative diagnostic technologies with pathology expertise to assess and characterize cancer. Clarient is focused on developing innovative ways to support physicians with diagnostic testing and digital pathology solutions for the profiling diagnosis of breast, lung, colon, melanoma and blood-based cancers. PATHSiTE Virtual HemeFISH is yet another pathology innovation designed to help clinicians make informed decisions on how best to treat their patients. Given the increasing importance of more targeted cancer diagnostics, Clarient is well positioned to bring differentiated, added-value molecular diagnostic products and services to market.

Tackling Cancer

At GE, we envision a day when cancer is no longer a deadly disease. In September 2011, GE Healthcare launched an ambitious global campaign against cancer, committing USD 1 billion of its total R&D budget over the next five years to expand its advanced cancer diagnostic and molecular imaging capabilities, as well as its world-class technologies for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and for cancer research. By the end of 2012, USD 335M had been invested, setting GE on track to meet its five-year commitment. To accelerate progress, and to deliver better care to 10 million patients by 2020, the campaign against cancer combines the strength of GE’s portfolio of cancer technologies with the innovations born from collaborations with key partners.