In late September, Proscia released one of the biggest expansions to its solutions with what we called a “clinical offering” of its platform. Having taken many months of planning, development, and testing, the clinical offering was ready to go and we were excited to see what people would make of it.
A quick humblebrag: with a bit under three months’ worth of usage and feedback, we’re not at all disappointed. So what was this product all about? What does our community of pathologists see in it that they didn’t see in the previous set of solutions? And why did we build it in the first place?
The biggest difference between the clinical offering and our existing research and education offerings is a shift in how the adopters of Proscia’s solutions think about their work. While researchers and educators work with known images in groups that they self-select, pathologists in the clinic see cases that start off as a group of images and associated metadata and end with a diagnosis. In research and education, existing information is studied.
In the clinic, a case is moved through a process or workflow, with information added along the way and ending with a diagnosis and a report. Therefore, the changes in the product had very little to do with new image analysis, data management, or collaboration applications. Instead, what’s been redesigned and introduced to our pathologist community is an offering that accommodates a wide range of uses, processes, and workflows. Of course, this may incorporate image analysis, data management, and collaboration, but only insofar as they assist in moving a case through its lifecycle in the lab.
So why does this matter? This matters because the clinical environment demands solutions that accommodates processes that are unique and diverse, and which fit in an ecosystem driven by precision, efficiency, and quality. Whether this means integration with an LIS and whole slide image scanner or the implementation of a user-defined software environment with varying access permissions and workflow schemas, the paradigm of the clinic is different. And with more and more clinics going digital, the demand for software platforms that meet these needs is growing.
More specifically, why does this matter to you? The answer is that while digital pathology has come a long way, digital pathology hardware and software remain a significant investment whose returns need to be seen both immediately as well as over the coming years. That’s why the clinical offering matters. On the one hand, it’s designed to integrate seamlessly into the existing pathology workflow, providing value to your lab today. Equally as important, the platform is a launchpad to extend your workflow as new applications and technologies continue to transform the pathology lab.
As Dr. Nicolas Cacciabeve of Advanced Pathology Associates, an adopter of Proscia’s clinical platform, describes well, both the value today and the promise of tomorrow make digital pathology a necessity for labs. We’re encouraged both by the feedback from those who have adopted our clinical offering and by the tremendous opportunities that this clinical offering have created for pathologists today and as a launchpad for what’s to come.
