Healthcare remains one of the few industries largely untouched by the software revolution that has transformed other industries like retail, transportation, and entertainment. Within healthcare, pathology ranks as one of the slowest fields to adopt software-driven change. As we often observe, pathology continues to use 150-year-old technology. Proscia’s CEO David West points out in an exclusive article published by VentureBeat that it is also the field that can benefit the most from software.
West explains how pathology today depends on the often subjective interpretation of biopsied tissue under the microscope. No matter how extensive the training, even the best pathologists disagree on diagnoses. Equally as chilling is that the number of cases (including those that require the attention of a subspecialist) is growing just as the number of pathologists has started to decline. The end result is uncertainty in diagnosis and, consequently, in treatment. All of this is compounded by the fact that while as much as 80 percent of patient care is impacted by a pathologist’s assessment, pathology accounts for only 2 percent of healthcare expenditure.
Pathology is primed for a software revolution. The advances in the ability of computers to recognize patterns in images coincides with the FDA’s first approval of a whole slide image scanner. This combination puts pathology at the precipice of a major transformation, not just of digital pathology but of computational pathology.
Read West’s full article in VentureBeat to discover the transformative power AI will have in pathology labs and cancer diagnosis.
Dr. Cacciabeve described why the organization chose to adopt digital pathology and its roll-out of Proscia’s offering, starting with tumor boards and peer reviews and moving on to a consultation portal and digital IHC. He additionally shared his thoughts on the necessity and inevitability of AI and computational pathology as part of the process of digitization – thoughts that Proscia shares and which CEO David West recently wrote about in VentureBeat.
To answer the question that may be on your mind, is your lab ready for the digital transformation? Absolutely! Along with discussing interesting themes in digital pathology, Dr. Cacciabeve also demonstrates the scalability and flexibility of adopting digital pathology software. Advanced Pathology Associates started with tumor boards and case reviews, and is now in the process of scaling into an increasingly digital workflow. To submit a request for the full webinar, click here.
One key point to remember, it is important to start now – as David’s commentary in Dark Daily explores, labs that adopt digital hold a distinct advantage over those that don’t. Your lab is ready for digital pathology today.
