UHB WMSDE Digital Histology Annotation - PME

This Prior Information Notice (PIN) outlines the requirements for a Digital Pathology: Histology Annotation Process to be implemented to support research taking place within the West Midlands Secure Data Environment (WMSDE) at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) located in Birmingham and Solihull, England.<br/><br/>Digital pathology whole slide images (WSI) represent a rich source of data that can be harnessed to develop algorithms that assist pathologists in diagnosis, providing critical information for treating a wide range of diseases. In creating these algorithms Computer scientists (CS) require WSI data to be prepared to facilitate their work. A crucial step in this preparation involves defining the pathology present within the slide and pinpointing its location so that it can be cross-referenced with the pixel data used by CS to train and test their algorithms. This process, known as semantic annotation, encompasses various levels of detail, from slide-level labels such as tissue type and disease status (positive or negative) to the identification of specific cell types and even subcellular structures, including organelles or viral inclusions. This briefing outlines requirements for effective and efficient WSI curation, to support the development of artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies. Implementation of this capability within the WMSDE with multimodal, longitudinal data from the NHS, would provide a world-class resource for AI development. Its builds on established capabilities derived from previous work on health data management including for the 100,000-genome project, the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, Health Data Research UK hubs as well as the current Regional SDE.