After an accident or with an acute medical condition, a patient is rushed to the hospital. If the doctors determine the patient’s life can’t be saved and proper organ donor consent has been provided, OPO coordinators begin the process to recover viable organs so lives can be saved. A single organ donor can save up to eight lives. Says CEO W. Scott Rombach of Specialist Direct, “Determining if organs are suitable for transplant through diagnostics in a critical part of the organ recovery process. Specialist Direct provides OPO solutions that improve the speed and accuracy of these diagnostics to help save lives.”
OPOs are continuously improving upon industry standards and formulating best practices. For example, having access to the right team of medical specialists as well as repeatable, consistent processes is critical in maximizing organ recovery rates. “Through Specialist Direct, OPOs now have access to a suite of cloud-based services that provide real-time access to top cardiologists, pathologists, and radiologists 24/7/365,” added Rombach.
For pathology cases, OPO teams are carrying Grundium Ocus® microscope scanners with them to local hospitals. The Ocus is small enough to fit in carry-on luggage and quick and easy to set up. Within the hospitals, liver and kidneys are biopsied and frozen section slides are prepared and then scanned with the Ocus scanner. As part of the scanning process, images are automatically sent to the Specialist Direct platform so its pathologists and subspecialists with transplant case experience can determine if an organ is suitable for transplant. OPOs no longer need to spend time couriering slides for pathology interpretations. Furthermore, images scanned by the Ocus are shared in real-time through Specialist Direct technology with transplant surgeons via their smart phones prior to surgery. The Ocus delivers all the benefits of digital pathology for OPOs, making their workflow completely streamlined. The ability to have a centralized system for diagnosis makes the whole process faster and greatly improves the accuracy of organ biopsy interpretations. More and more OPOs are building their own organ recovery centers and surgery centers to further improve and control the speed and consistency of the organ diagnostic process. Says Rombach, “One of the things I very much admire about OPOs is their willingness to improve processes to save lives. For example, OPOs are increasing organ recovery rates by more aggressively pursuing donation after cardiac death (DCD) cases as well as embracing technology that facilitates best practices. I expect these trends to continue.”
The Grundium Ocus® makes a big difference for the OPOs. Its portability and connectivity combined with the high image quality make it a reliable precision instrument in OPOs fast-paced and ever mobile work. Its price point puts the Ocus within reach for all. Specialist Direct is Grundium’s partner for the OPO market.
Contact Grundium for a personal demo of the world’s most practical and integrable microscope scanners, the Ocus® series: contact@grundium.com
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