Digital-Pathology-Today

One of the buzz words associated with digital pathology is, of course, "workflows." In this episode of Digital Pathology Today, we will examine the components and considerations of workflows that a pathology group has to consider before implementing a digital pathology system. We will discuss interoperability and how pathology groups and hospital systems can maximize their investment and future- proof the investment to protect against downside along the way. We are talking with Dr. Mark Lloyd, the founder of Inspirata, who had a vision of developing and delivering innovative solutions to transform the cancer experience for doctors and patients.

Our guest this episode is Dr. Elizabeth Neyens, a toxicological pathologist who focuses on pre-clinical research, histopathological evaluation, due diligence, digital pathology as well as quality assurance expertise. This episode we will look at toxicological pathology and the role of digital pathology in drug development. We will discuss the job of a toxicological pathologist and how it has shifted during COVD-19. We will also look at the use of artificial intelligence in drug development.

This episode will be examining fully integrated digital pathology systems with Michael Isaacs. We discover what this system will look like and what it will mean compared to the analog model. We will discuss the business case and return on investment for full scale adoption for varying usage and size. Michael Isaacs is the Director of Clinical Informatics and Business Development from the Department of Pathology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He has a computer background and over 25 years experience supporting information technology in the laboratory. His primary interest is providing strategic vision for the implementation of digital pathology to health care systems and to better meet patients needs. He has been on the board of directors of the Digital Pathology Association for the past five years and is currently the co-chair for the education committee for the DPA.

Our guest this week is Dan Milner, MD, MSc, Chief Medical Officer of the ASCP. Dr. Milner has been heavily involved in pathology capacity building in many countries and, most notably, led the team that built anatomic pathology laboratories in Rwanda and Haiti for advanced cancer diagnostics. Before joining ASCP, Dr. Milner spent 10 years at Harvard where he was the primary lead for infectious disease consultations in AP and CP; and was the recipient of numerous research grants and the author of over 100 publications. We’re talking about the global practice of pathology - challenges and opportunities in implementing laboratory systems in both the developed and developing world. We seem to be at a unique position to take advantage of improvements in technology and digital pathology to add enormous value to the lives of the doctors and patients we serve as pathologists. We’ll talk about what the future holds for the profession of pathology. What is the truth about reports of the much talked about impending shortage of pathologists? Will technology make much of what we do obsolete? Who will be the beneficiaries of new applications in artificial intelligence? Will pathologists become the conductors of the orchestra of medicine?

Our guest this week is Dr. Mark Tuthill, head of Pathology informatics at Henry Ford Health System. Dr. Tuthill is member of the CAP-Education committee, the ASCP Informatics Council and the API leadership council. He has extensive experience in: anatomic and clinical pathology laboratory information systems, digital imaging systems for pathology practice, computer networking, mobile computing networks, and computer-based education. We’re going to be talking about informatics – what exactly is informatics and what does it mean in the context of digital pathology? How will digital pathology systems be integrated with laboratory information systems and how does this differ from the analog model? What will workflows look like in digital pathology? What are the complexities? What are the dangers? and what are we most likely not thinking about? And of course, what are the barriers we face in making this all work?

Our guest this week is Dr. Joe Lennerz, Associate Chief of Pathology and the Medical Director of the Center for Integrated Diagnostics (CID) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He oversees all aspects of the clinical laboratory service that supports personalized medicine at MGH. He was the principal investigator of the first FDA instrument precision study for the first whole slide scanning system. We're talking about Regulatory matters in digital pathology, the various regulatory bodies at play and the alphabet soup of regulation such as CLIA, CAP , FDA, GDRP and so forth. What is the 21 st century cures act and how does it impact digital pathology? And many folks may be surprised to learn about new initiatives such as the Digital Health Center of Excellence at the FDA, designed to spur innovation. We’ll learn about the Alliance for Digital Pathology - A regulatory science initiative to harmonize and standardize digital pathology processes to speed up innovation to patients. In the past it's been tempting for many of us to think of regulation as a burden but is this mode of thinking outdated? By proactively forming partnerships with regulatory bodies will we actually be able to spur innovation and advance the state of the Science?

Our guest this episode is Dr. Matthew Hanna, Director of Digital Pathology Informatics and breast pathologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Hanna serves as a member on the CAP Informatics Committee as well as an editor for the Journal of Pathology Informatics. We will be discussing his experience in the digital pathology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering as well as recent advances in digital sign out. What is the current status digital sign out - from a practical as well as regulatory standpoint? What obstacles and resistance have we faced in remote sign out? And of course, what are the implications of the global COVID-19 pandemic? Were pathologists ready for remote sign out? What regulatory barriers came down to facilitate adoption. And which - if any - of these gains will become standard practice once the pandemic is over?

In this special edition of Digital Pathology Today, we're recapping Pathology Visions 2020 - the premier meeting in digital pathology, which is, of course, put on by the Digital Pathology Association (DPA). We'll be talking with Abbey Norris, the executive director of the Digital Pathology Association and Michael Rivers of Roche Tissue Diagnostics and the current president of the DPA. Abbey and Michael were instrumental in organizing this year's virtual meeting. If there's one theme that's emerging, it’s that digital pathology is a reality in 2020. It is no longer pie-in-the-sky talk about what might happen at some point in the future. It is a reality in the practice of medicine in 2020. Changes in terms of adoption and innovation are only being accelerated by vast improvements in technology and artificial intelligence applications. The global pandemic has certainly accelerated adoption - specifically remote sign out of actual patient cases in clinical practice.

Ajit Singh has had a vast variety of experiences in digital pathology as well as digital radiology - in both operations and venture capital. He was President and CEO at BioImagene, a digital pathology company acquired by Roche, and CEO of digital radiology and medical informatics at Siemens healthcare. He is a partner at Artiman Ventures, focusing on early stage Technology and life sciences investments. Dr. Singh also serves as adjunct professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and is on the Board of Trustees of the AACR He joins us to talk about similarities and differences between the two visually based diagnostic specialties, pathology and radiology, challenges and opportunities as it applies to the global workforce shortage of pathologists in both the developed and developing world , as well as practical applications of artificial intelligence in digital pathology, and why the future might be here sooner than you may think.

Dr. Anthony Magliocco has had a career spanning over 30 years and is an internationally recognized expert in developing and deploying advanced diagnostics to help cancer patients. Prior to founding Protean Bio diagnostics, Dr. Magliocco was chair of Pathology and Executive Director of Esoteric Laboratory Services at Moffitt Cancer Center. In addition, he served as Scientific Director of Moffitt Cancer Center Tissue Core and founded new fellowships in molecular diagnostics as well as digital image analysis. Dr. Magliocco has published over 200 manuscripts, which have been cited over times 10,000 times in the scientific literature. We're going to be talking about the evolving role of the pathologist in the setting of personalized medicine. What has pathology, as a field, done well, in terms of providing tools and solutions to assist clinicians and patients in individualizing treatment options? What opportunities are there for change or improvement amidst, the massive growth and opportunity in the field of personalized medicine. Will our expanding capabilities in image analysis and the promise of artificial intelligence enable us to create new and powerful tools to diagnose disease and guide therapy? Have we finally turned the corner in incorporating diagnostics two large prospective randomized trials which will allow us to develop and validate powerful tools to refine our prognostic and predictive capabilities? Does image analysis and the ability to Multiplex open up a whole new world of possibilities to create more powerful tools than we ever imagined? And what does the future hold?