ASP Health

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  • 2023

  • Product
    Medical and Scientific

Designed By:

Commissioned By:

ASP Health

Designed In:

Australia

ASP Health’s Automated Sample Preparation System enables rapid, on-site, consistent, high-quality preparation of two slides for immediate and secondary analysis designed to enhance cancer diagnosis. It transforms the rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) process for Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) biopsies, dramatically reducing the need for repeat invasive biopsies.


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  • CHALLENGE
  • SOLUTION
  • IMPACT
  • MORE
  • FNA is a biopsy procedure that extracts tissue sample from a tumor. Unfortunately, up to 32% of FNAs need to be repeated due to insufficient suitable samples for diagnosis, resulting in a second invasive procedure. The ROSE procedure combats this by evaluating the tissue sample on-site to quickly determine if the sample is sufficient. ROSE can reduce repeat biopsy rates by up to 70%, reducing the stress on patients and allowing them to begin life-saving treatments quicker. However, due to a shortage of cytotechnologists to manually smear and stain slides, ROSE is only used in about 30% of institutions.

  • The ASP Device was designed to democratize ROSE and make it adoptable on a larger scale. It completely automates the sample preparation process, delivering high-quality, consistent samples every time. The patient sample is loaded into a cartridge and inserted into the instrument, depositing the sample onto two slides – one stained for immediate assessment, the other ready for a pathology lab to diagnose. The process takes under two minutes. The ASP Device makes it possible for all facilities that offer FNA to efficiently perform ROSE, providing enriched patient samples for cancer diagnostic and therapeutic evaluation, leading to improved patient outcomes.

  • The current process for ROSE is finicky and manual. ASP Device allows health professionals to implement the ROSE process affordably and efficiently in their operating rooms, reducing repeat biopsy rates by up to 70% that can lead to improved cancer survival rates through enhanced diagnosis. It empowers time-poor cytotechnologists, who have been trained for more sophisticated tasks such as reading slides and providing analysis, to focus their time on analyzing the slides and leave the slide preparation to the device. It enables cancer patients to get results faster so they can focus on their treatment.

  • The ASP Device is the first and only instrument that automates and standardizes manual slide preparation following FNA biopsy – its only competition is the manual process undertaken by cytotechnologists. The current manual process is chaotic and varies from hospital to hospital. Cytotechnologists are completely reliant on surgeons to get the best possible samples from the patient. They receive a high inflow of samples throughout the procedure, forcing them to multi-task to keep up. They must manage each sample from a needle onto a slide, picking off blood clots, smearing the sample between slides and then hand-dipping them in dye. They then must dry the slides by hand – in many cases, hospitals use hair dryers for this process. This can cause aerosolization, increasing the risk of airborne disease. All this work is done and still often doesn’t provide a sample of high enough quality to provide a clear diagnosis. ASP brings order to this chaos with a tailor-made solution that is easy to implement. The device automates slide preparation and takes care of ensuring sample quality so diagnosis can be achieved. This gives users hands-free time to produce and read slides from the flow of samples coming in from the FNA.