Clarapath Working With Mayo Clinic to Bolster Pathology Tissue Processing

Clarapath has forged a strategic collaboration with Mayo Clinic to advance laboratory automation.
 
For decades, laboratories have relied on labor intensive, manual procedures to process tissue specimens to diagnoseg cancer and other diseases. Faced with labor shortages, quality control challenges, and rapidly increasing sample volumes, laboratories need to innovate and improve the reliability and efficiency of creating glass slides for pathological review. Clarapath’s SectionStar is an automated tissue sectioning, transfer and quality control system that combines robotics, computational artificial intelligence (AI), and integrated histopathology workflows, resulting in standardized slide outputs and quantitative quality metrics. This can significantly accelerate sample processing and reduce human involvement and errors, Clarapath claims.
 
The strategic collaboration combines Clarapath’s tissue solution and domain experts with the clinical insights and expertise of Mayo Clinic. The union will enable laboratories across the globe to digitally transform the quality, safety, cost, and throughput of their histology process. The automation supports more informed and faster decisions that help improve the delivery and quality of patient care and allow existing laboratory personnel to successfully handle rising case volumes. Additionally, the companies will collaborate to develop new solutions to further improve the histopathology laboratory.
 
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Mayo Clinic to advance the modernization of anatomic pathology,” Clarapath CEO Eric Feinstein said. “Laboratories, like manufacturing plants, need constant innovation and modernization. With SectionStar, leaders can now reimagine the histology process to keep up with increasing caseloads and shrinking workforces. This will help patients get quicker test results and more immediate access to care.”
 
As part of the collaboration, Joaquín García, M.D., chair of the Anatomic Pathology division within the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and chair of Mayo Clinic’s Digital Pathology Program, is joining Clarapath’s Board of Directors. 
 
“Mayo Clinic is at the leading edge of technological advancement in anatomic pathology. Incorporating digital pathology and artificial intelligence into our current practice has highlighted the need for standardizing pre-analytic processes,” García stated. “By working with Clarapath, we are building the foundation for a ‘lab of the future’ that incorporates end-to-end automation, robotics, and AI to the patient tissue lifecycle.”
 
Mayo Clinic has a financial interest in the aforementioned technology, and will use any revenue it receives to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.
 
Clarapath is a medical robotics company aimed at catalyzing change in the way pathology laboratories work. Clarapath’s SectionStar is the first (pending U.S. launch) all-in-one tissue sectioning and transfer system that increases capacity, reliability, and consistency while minimizing the need for highly skilled labor. The company is headquartered and runs its medical device development in Hawthorne, N.Y. It has a CLIA-certified laboratory that serves clinical and non-clinical organizations.