question about digital pathology services

[cellmatrix922]

I have seen a lot of hype around the burgeoning digital pathology industry. This may be an ill informed question, but most of my preliminary searches are yielding vendors for digital pathology scanners.

I'm interested in offering pathology morphology consultation services on a private consultant basis. Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for histology labs offering digital pathology support for outsourced histology to private contractors?

I'd rather partner and utilize a digital pathology solution, instead of building up and developing my own histology laboratory. I don't think this is yet a common model. Do you think there would be any major compliance issues? Given especially that at-home pathology signout is currently accepted by CAP, I think this may be an attractive approach for lab startups.

Thank you!

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[Napoleon1801]

Hype - Yes, a lot of it from vendors and admins. The use cases for digital path still seem pretty narrow in clinical practice IMHO.

You probably need to double check state laws surrounding "telemedicine" for the geographic area in which you plan to practice. There may be a niche for this type of consult, but without being able to cut your own slides and perform immunostains, you might be somewhat disadvantaged. You may have an opportunity for a second-read on a difficult frozen section, but all your clients would still need a slide scanner.

 

[cellmatrix922]

Hype - Yes, a lot of it from vendors and admins. The use cases for digital path still seem pretty narrow in clinical practice IMHO.

You probably need to double check state laws surrounding "telemedicine" for the geographic area in which you plan to practice. There may be a niche for this type of consult, but without being able to cut your own slides and perform immunostains, you might be somewhat disadvantaged. You may have an opportunity for a second-read on a difficult frozen section, but all your clients would still need a slide scanner.

Thank you. I was thinking of trying to identify a histology lab to whom I could direct potential client FFPE blocks or marrow aspirate smears, and that lab would then digitize all slides, thus allowing me to effectively outsource all my histology work while I focus solely on the professional interpretation and final report generations. It sounds like this model for digitally outsourced histology preparation is not widespread or well established, is that true?

 

[Napoleon1801]

Thank you. I was thinking of trying to identify a histology lab to whom I could direct potential client FFPE blocks or marrow aspirate smears, and that lab would then digitize all slides, thus allowing me to effectively outsource all my histology work while I focus solely on the professional interpretation and final report generations. It sounds like this model for digitally outsourced histology preparation is not widespread or well established, is that true?

I have a limited view of this, so take it with a grain of salt. There are some pioneering groups like Ohio State University who digitize all their slides, but this is very much in the minority. Unless you can diagnose more/faster/better, the digitization step requires extra resources which cost time/money. Unless you have a special use case (isolated rural areas?), I'm not sure if I see the pay-off.

Perhaps there's a use-case outside of research/academia, but I'm not aware of it.