Editors: Raymond D. Aller, MD & Dennis Winsten
AI Playground offers CAP members immersive experience
August 2025—Recognizing the value of researching options before purchasing a big-ticket item, the College of American Pathologists has developed the AI Playground to help pathologists assess artificial intelligence tools before going all-in on a technology that may not end up suiting their needs, among other potential issues.
The playground will offer cutting-edge AI tools that pathologists can test-drive from the comfort of their own laboratories using simulated data sets on a platform designed specifically for that purpose. It will be available to CAP members at no charge and accessible via the CAP website after it is debuted in the CAP Innovation Hub and the College’s booth at CAP25, in Orlando, next month.
The AI Playground provides a “sandbox environment for pathologists to look at different AI tools developed by a range of vendors,” explains dermatopathologist Raj Singh, MD, who, as founder of the pathology-focused image-sharing platform PathPresenter, collaborated with the College to develop the offering. “This will help them understand the algorithms being used with each tool, their use cases in the clinical setting, as well as their risks and limitations.”
CAP members can access the playground from the CAP website’s home page, www.cap.org.
Once logged in, the browser will automatically load the PathPresenter platform that hosts the AI tools and displays relevant information about the companies and products in a dashboard on the dedicated portal. Users can search for specific tools alphabetically, or by entering a company name, or by use case, such as lung, gastric, or breast.
When users open a tool, the browser will display a list of test cases that were developed using a mix of synthetic and real data. Each test case is presented with a set of digital slides with which users can interact. Playing around with the AI model in conjunction with associated slides for a test case gives pathologists a deeper understanding of how the tool is processing the data and whether they agree with its output, says Shannon Hoekstra, CAP vice president of emerging technologies and innovation. The vendors also provide a brief summary of the tool as a short video that can be played from the browser window or as a user guide that is a PDF document.
The platform itself is browser agnostic, notes Hoekstra, and the AI tools have performed well on a variety of operating systems.
The playground will give CAP members an opportunity to try a plethora of AI tools that may or may not prove to be useful to them, says M. E. de Baca, MD, a hematopathologist at Pacific Pathology Partners, in Seattle, and chair of the CAP Council on Informatics and Pathology Innovation, which came up with the idea for the offering. “There’s no sales pressure,” she emphasizes. “You are free to play around with the tools before any contact with the vendors. And once you’ve had a chance to test them out, you’ll have questions that you can put to the vendor and get a better understanding of how to use the tool.”
The AI Playground is being introduced with modules from up to 50 vendors, all of whom are paying a subscription fee to be included on the site.
The College plans to solicit other companies once the offering is live. (AI companies that want to participate in the playground should contact Kevin Schap, CAP director of clinical informatics initiatives, informatics, and digital pathology, at [email protected].) Approved vendors that purchase space on the website will work directly with PathPresenter to integrate their tools into the offering.
The CAP is developing model cards that vendors will have to submit with the products they want to feature in the playground, but those cards will not be available in the first iteration of the site. The cards will provide such information as how the tool was designed and evaluated, among other data. It is intended as another means by which users can compare similar AI tools and determine their level of trust in the outputs.
Also on the horizon is the ability for CAP members to upload personal or institutional patient data into the modules they test. “Once the platform is launched,” says Dr. Singh, “we are immediately going to go into phase two, where we will create the back-end infrastructure where [users] can upload their own data.”
Federal government scales back real-world testing of health IT
The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has announced that it will not enforce real-world testing requirements, outlined in the ONC’s 21st Century Cures Act final rule, for select certified health information technologies.
The move, a part of President Donald Trump’s deregulation efforts, will ease testing requirements for, among other technologies, electronic health records. Therefore, EHR vendors are no longer required to submit annual real-world testing plans or report results of such testing to their ONC-authorized certification body. Of note, the measure does not apply to application programming interfaces.
Consistent with Executive Order 14192, “ASTP/ONC has identified certain regulatory requirements for which the exercise of enforcement discretion would reduce burden and costs for regulated entities,” according to a press release from that federal body.
The new requirements for enforcement discretion will remain in effect until Dec. 31, 2026 or until the Department of Health and Human Services completes a deregulatory action to revise the language in the applicable section of the Code of Federal Regulations.
PathAI gets FDA nod for digital pathology system
PathAI has received Food and Drug Administration 510(k) clearance for use of its AISight Dx digital pathology image-management system in primary diagnosis in clinical settings with the Hamamatsu NanoZoomer S360MD and Leica Aperio GT 450 DX slide scanners.
The FDA clearance includes a predetermined change control plan, allowing PathAI to make certain predefined modifications to the software, such as adding displays, scanners, file formats, and browsers, without additional FDA 510(k) submissions.
AISight Dx is a cloud-native digital pathology platform for anatomic pathology workflows.
PathAI, 617-500-8457
FDA clears PathPresenter digital pathology viewer
The Food and Drug Administration has granted 510(k) clearance to the digital pathology company PathPresenter for its PathPresenter clinical viewer for the purpose of primary diagnosis. This clearance is for use of the product with the Hamamatsu NanoZoomer S360MD slide scanner NDPI image formats viewed on the Barco NV MDPC-8127 display device.
The clinical viewer is a component of PathPresenter’s vendor-agnostic image-management system. The PathPresenter platform is designed to facilitate whole slide image viewing, sharing, storage, and collaboration.
Oracle debuts mobile EHR tool that works offline
Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Health Community Care, which allows health care providers to access and update patient records regardless of the availability of Internet connectivity.
Health care providers can download patient data to the tool, a cloud-based mobile extension of the company’s Oracle Health Foundation EHR, for use in areas without an Internet connection. Information that health care providers add to the patient record while working offline is synchronized with the EHR to update the master record when the device is reconnected to a network.
Health care providers can enter patient orders and document patient assessments via the mobile solution.
Oracle, 888-753-4428
ACR to launch committee focused on AI economics
The American College of Radiology reported that it is developing an artificial intelligence economics committee that will consolidate AI resources and create financial strategies for developing and deploying radiologic AI tools.
“The committee will specifically address Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance coverage and reimbursement for AI tools used in radiologic care,” according to a press statement from the ACR.
The committee will consist of approximately 10 members, all of whom have expertise in related areas, such as Medicare and Medicaid payment schedules, Current Procedural Terminology code development and implementation, and convolutional neural network applications.
“Many ACR commissions and volunteers have dedicated themselves to scenario planning, federal rulemaking response, and collaborating with government and multi-specialty thought leaders on how to bring this impactful technology to the bedside of our patients,” said Gregory Nicola, MD, chair of the ACR commission on economics, in the press statement. “The artificial intelligence economics committee will enable us to consolidate resources across the college by bringing together a diverse range of expertise to continue this vital work.”
Gestalt showcases pathology AI capabilities at connectathon
Gestalt featured its artificial intelligence-powered pathology platform PathFlow at the Spring 2025 DICOM WG-26 Interoperability Connectathon, cosponsored by the Digital Pathology Association and European Society of Digital and Integrative Pathology.
At the approximately four-month-long virtual event, Gestalt’s image viewer displayed images from eight of nine different whole slide imaging scanners, demonstrating compatibility with multiple systems, including those of 3DHistech, Grundium, Leica, Hamamatsu, and Pramana. PathFlow also displayed annotations from the AI evidence creators Visiopharm, Hologic, TechCyte, and Identify.bio.
“As an evidence creator itself (AI annotations), Gestalt showcased its advanced AI capabilities by analyzing and annotating images from eight scanners,” according to a Gestalt press release. “These annotations were successfully transmitted to five different image-management archives using standard DICOM Web protocols, highlighting Gestalt’s ability to deliver accurate, standards-compliant AI-driven outputs.”
Gestalt, 509-492-4912
Dr. Aller practices clinical informatics in Southern California. He can be reached at [email protected]. Dennis Winsten is founder of Dennis Winsten & Associates, Healthcare Systems Consultants. He can be reached at [email protected].