Can you introduce your laboratory?
We are part of the Curie Institute in Paris, a cancer centre that treats all types of cancer in particular breast cancer.
We mainly treat breast samples, the rest of the samples cqn vqry: gynaecological, digestive…
The laboratory consists of 14 pathologists, 21 technicians, 3 medical assistants and 2 laboratory assistants. We process 14,000 samples per year, which represents approximately 100,000 blocks per year and 200,000 slides per year. We keep the blocks for 10 years and the slides for 12 years at the institute, blocks and slides are archived with an external service provider. We are accredited according to ISO 15 189 for HPV and are in the process of being accredited for HES
In what context did you choose to automate the archiving of your blocks and slides?
We discovered the Fina block archiving system in 2017 during a meeting with the anapathic executives that took place in Nantes. At that time, we had two problems: the time lost in finding blocks and a significant amount of time spent on storing in numerical order those blocks and slides. We spent several hours a day archiving the blocks and retrieving them, knowing that we had to retrieve between 50 and 60 blocks per day to carry out complementary techniques.
This time could have been devoted to cutting for example, and we could have returned the results more quickly.
On the other hand, the search for misplaced blocks was frequent. This was a very stressful situation. It seemed obvious to us to invest in a solution that would solve these problems, especially for block traceability.
We had no budget for the Fina purchase, so we signed a contract to make it available in 2017 and then in 2020 we were able to invest in a Crystal system for slide archiving.
How was the integration of Fina & Crystal solutions in your laboratory?
The integration was easy for us, the company supported us throughout the project, from its conception to its implementation. On the other hand, the Crystal and Fina are easy to use and their software is very intuitive, we had no particular difficulty in to understand them. The only difficulty during their installation was related to the printing quality of the blocks and slides. We had to ensure good print quality and therefore readability by the Crystal and Fina systems. This is an important point that I would recommend checking before installing such systems.
For Crystal, we also had to reduce the amount of mounting medium to prevent the boards from sticking to the on the Crystal trays. These adjustments were made with the support of Dreampath, the supplier’s assistance is essential to implement new solutions in good conditions.
In terms of process, we maintained a similar organisation. After cutting, the technicians always check that the slides match the blocks. When the slides are validated, they place the blocks in the Fina drawers. We save half an hour to three quarters of an hour a day on this stage because we no longer have to arrange them in numerical order. The Fina drawers are archived as we go along. We don’t wait until the end of the day, so our archiving process is smoother and more fluid.
Thanks to the Fina system, we have also improved our organisation: we can now make 3 types of Fina drawers to isolate the blocks of surgical parts, biopsies and blocks that are cut for second time. All the blocks that are going to be recut are thus grouped together, which saves us even more time. This has become possible because we no longer need to arrange the blocks in numerical order.
Today to your assessment, what is your level of satisfaction with the instruments, consumables and associated services?
We have saved a few hours a day in archiving blocks and slides. We no longer have the problem of misplaced blocks or slides, traceability with Fina and Crystal allows us to work with complete peace of mind. Today, no one would want to go back to manual archiving. For the slides, traceability is even more important because of different approvers, and we also carry out a lot of research projects.
As far as after-sales service is concerned, we have had very little intervention on the Fina & Crystal systems, whether for preventive or curative maintenance, these are robust instruments.
One of our concerns before making this choice was the backup of data in the event of in case of PC failure, but we have multiple the backups to avoid any risk of losing information: on the PCs and on the network.
To date, we have never had a PC crash. Finally, in terms of storage space, we have gained a lot of room for blades, which space for blades, which will allow us to store more slides in the laboratory.
In summary, I would say that the 3 main advantages of the Fina and Crystal are the traceability that allows us to work easy, and the speed with which we can manage the archiving of blocks & slides.
If you had to choose between Crystal and Fina, which solution would you choose?
I would choose Fina because they are the most valuable blocks. If we lose a block, it can’t be replaced, whereas a lost slide less of a problem as we can always recut it.
What improvements would you like to make Fina and Crystal systems?
I think we should work on a solution that allows us to send the Fina trays easily to our service provider for outsourced archiving, and why not offer an external storage service with Fina and Crystal solutions?
It would also be interesting to be able to interface our LMS. ARIANE to Fina or CRYSTAL so that the list of blocks & slides to be can be sent by the SGL to the “baskets” of the Fina and Crystal software. This would save us even more time.
Finally, if it were possible to reduce the output of blocks to one click instead of two, this would also be a plus in our daily work.
We should soon be able to meet your expectations for these areas of improvement. Thank you for sharing your feedback with us and for your trust!
