I often use a “cars and roads”analogy to explain certain aspects of #digitalpathology . Large high throughput scanners can be compared to fast cars, but without good quality roads linking large cities (hospitals) they can gather dust in the garage.
In this article, I explain that you don’t necessarily need a Porsche or a Lamborghini to achieve something useful, maintain turnaround times and add experience and quality to a specialist cancer MDT when working as a “nomadic pathologist”. With a bit of motivation, and highly supportive enthusiastic colleagues I used a small scanner and a web based viewer in a hybrid workflow to review and /or diagnose a small proportion of the MDT slides remotely. The next step is to increase the proportion of the cases reported and reviewed digitally in this and other parts of regional cancer network. The big cars are being wheeled out of the showroom as we speak. Fingers crossed there won’t be too many road taxes and barricades!
This is the full pdf of my article about validation of a slide scanner to continue my role as upper GI lead pathologist for the south west Devon and Cornwall Peninsula specialist cancer MDT.
