Indica Labs, a provider of computational pathology software, and Octo, an information technology systems provider to the U.S. Federal Government, announced the online COVID Digital Pathology Repository (COVID-DPR), a virtual collection of high resolution microscopic COVID-related human tissue images hosted at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to a press release.
While the number of COVID-19-related deaths continues to rise worldwide, only a few organizations are equipped with the viral containment facilities to perform autopsies and collect tissues from patients who succumb to the disease. These tissues are critical for researchers who are investigating the pathology, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19 infection. COVID-DPR was created to enable international collaboration by providing a centralized, cloud-based repository for sharing and annotating digital whole slide images of lung, liver, kidney and heart tissues from patients with COVID-19 disease, as well as the closely related coronaviruses associated with SARS and MERS. The whole slide images, annotations and metadata in the repository will be used as a reference data set for education, research and future clinical trials aimed at limiting further infection, disease, and death.
COVID-DPR is underpinned by Indica Labs’ HALO Link software, a collaborative image management platform designed specifically for secure sharing of digital whole slide images and data. The HALO Link instance associated with COVID-DPR will be deployed in a web portal developed and managed by Octo and Axle Informatics to provide a secure, globally accessible central repository. Biomedical scientists can securely add, view, annotate, analyze, and share whole slide images using HALO Link. Indica Labs’ image analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools can also be integrated and accessed within the HALO Link interface.
“The entire Indica Labs team takes great pride in working with NIH and Octo to deliver a much-needed global integration for COVID-19 pathology and a framework for the implementation of further cutting-edge technologies,” said Steven Hashagen, CEO at Indica Labs. “Deployment of the HALO Link platform will provide data availability and allow real-time collaboration between the world’s leading clinical institutions at this critical time in our battle against the novel coronavirus.”
Octo has supported NIH with software and systems development for the last decade, including NIH’s first blockchain program. “We knew we wanted to do something meaningful to help fight the COVID pandemic. This project with Indica Labs and NIH was exactly the avenue we were looking for.” Octo CEO Mehul Sanghani said. “This effort really allows us to put our best capabilities to use on this pivotal effort.”
