HORIBA Medical launches new look blood cell morphology educational newsletter

HORIBA UK Ltd, Medical announces that it has launched its new look blood cell morphology focused newsletter which draws on and shares HORIBA Medical’s hematology expertise with a broad audience. The Quality Slide Program (QSP) newsletter offering detailed morphology case studies, disease focuses, top morphology tips, slide reviews, and quizzes, is a useful cross hematology platform educational tool for blood cell identification. Monthly issues are available to download and subscribe to from HORIBA Medical’s website.

Image Credit: HORIBA

Features in the latest issue of the newsletter include a focus on Hereditary Spherocytosis which provides an overview of the clinical features of this heterogeneous group of disorders, laboratory findings, and treatment. As well as tips on how to differentiate between eosinophils and basophils, and a clinical case study on the urgent diagnosis of a 76-year-old male with mantle cell lymphoma.

The QSP newsletter can be used as a standalone educational tool or as part of HORIBA’s overall Quality Slide Program (QSP) 2.0 online morphology training package. This offers six digital cell morphology slides of real-life cases for download and examination to enable continuous training and competency assessment every month.

Just as the QSP monthly newsletter is a valuable educational tool for any hematologist involved in cell morphology, HORIBA’s QSP 2.0 online learning packages support blood cell identification evaluation in all laboratories, whatever their hematology platform. This helps to build and reinforce the blood film morphology knowledge base within the hematology laboratory.

The Quality Slide Program (QSP) 2.0 is a unique and affordable digital tool for skill evaluation and training in morphology which covers a huge diversity of pathologies seen globally. Using high-definition digital cell morphology imaging, the QSP 2.0 software enables laboratory staff to examine and report on digital blood films that have been pre-selected and reviewed by experts.

In addition to supporting continuous learning and building staff confidence, this also helps to standardize an area of the laboratory that can be subjective. Furthermore, it enables laboratory management to assess their staffs’ ability to correctly classify individual white blood cell (WBC) populations and other identifiable elements in accordance with the quality control requirements of ISO15189.

HORIBA recognizes and understands the important work that the hematology laboratory community undertakes and aims to wholly support it. Our QSP newsletter is one example of this, it offers relevant industry and clinical insights and information on blood cell morphology for general updates, as well as challenges and tasks to aid staff training and development.

Listening to feedback from our readers, we have now revamped our QSP newsletter looks and content to make it even more useful and engaging to the wider hematology laboratory community.”

Kelly Duffy, HORIBA Medical Sales Specialist and QSP newsletter editor

Further examples of HORIBA’s commitment to supporting learning and accreditation in hematology include, among other things, a series of cell morphology quick reference posters that are available on request as useful and colorful additions for laboratory walls. HORIBA UK will also be running an educational webinar on QSP in April 2021.

Download or registration to receive HORIBA Medical’s monthly QSP cell morphology newsletter is available at https://www.horiba.com/en_en/medical/qsp-newsletter/