Digital pathology matchmaking: people, pixels

Even before asking if digital should replace glass, he says, it’s important to make sure everyone understands what digital pathology is. Though it’s commonly defined as virtual microscopy or WSI, he says it makes sense to think more broadly. “We’d be remiss not to include all our gross images, any microscopic images you take from the microscope itself, electron microscopy images, fluorescence imaging—anything that you do with imaging as part of the pathology process, you should be capturing those and including them in your set.”

Other questions to ponder:

• How will you obtain operational money for digital pathology?
• What will it mean for your FTE footprint?
• How will it affect human re­sources?
• How will it affect CLIA and HIPAA?

“Before, we didn’t think about HIPAA much with glass,” short of losing a set of slides, Dr. McClintock says. Digital pathology, on the other hand, presents cybersecurity issues.

• How do you integrate digital pathology with the LIS, specimen ID systems, the EHR?
• How much is this going to cost?

Dr. McClintock, comparing it to a home renovation, uses the adage, double the cost, triple the time. “We got this induction stove, and a washer—wait, you need a new water line? My dryer needs a water line? That kind of stuff.”

• Do you want to validate your scanners as an LDT?

“You can skip the FDA process if you want,” says Dr. McClintock. “But then you’re putting risk on your institution. If something goes wrong, is your validation good enough to get you through a court case?”

• Where are the cost savings?

Asks Dr. McClintock: “Is saving pathologists time something you can prove? If you save two FTE pathologists by going digital, can you then cut two FTEs? Will you be allowed to do that? You need to think about numbers.”

Like a bathing suit at the beach, certain numbers are gently creeping upward at OSU.

The several pathologists who began using digital pathology early on, for research endeavors, saw its value and have begun applying it elsewhere. When primary diagnosis became an option, “They were willing to look at it and see if it worked for them or not. I didn’t have to convince them too much,” Dr. Parwani says. The early adopters also served as almost casual ambassadors for the digital adoption. “When they do something, and show it to their colleagues, that improves visibility.”

The next group of pathologists who agreed to try digital pathology came aboard when OSU began scanning all consult slides. Pathologists now have access to these images and can sign out digitally—about 15 are doing so. “Once that initial wave of consult slides were scanned, more people wanted to do it,” Dr. Parwani says. OSU has also launched digital tumor boards, which has drawn in additional digital adherents.

In the past year, Dr. Parwani estimates, about 20 pathologists have begun using digital slides for some application; six to eight now also use it for primary diagnosis. (OSU has 36 anatomic pathologists among its 77 pathology faculty.)

“Everyone is taking their own journey,” he says with the cheerful patience of a yoga instructor. “Some are far ahead; others are following. I don’t have a single pathologist who says, ‘I don’t want to use digital slides.’ Everyone is willing to try it for a different application.”

Dr. Parwani sounds completely comfortable with this approach, noting that for its many successes, problems in the digital workflow remain, including scanner-related issues. “If everything was working 100 percent the way I think it should,” he says, “then I would go with the top-down approach. I would say, ‘By July 2019 everybody has to sign out digitally.’ ” But since that’s not the case, “I’m letting technology and adoption catch up together.” At some point, he hopes, “These two tracks will merge.”

Adds Dr. Parwani, “Technology should not be used as a reason to change people. People should change themselves and use the technology they’re most comfortable with. That’s when true adoption will occur.”

Until then, he will continue asking his colleagues to renew their digital vows. Pathologists’ early fears have been replaced by fresh ones. Now that the glass slides have been digitized, will they be expected to be online 24–7? Will they become slaves to the IT system, with cases constantly pushed into the queue? Will the demands of digital pathology kick teaching and research to the curb? Some even express skepticism at the amount of money being spent on digital pathology, Dr. Parwani says.

Dr. Parwani knows these fears because he actively solicits them. With the help of OSU epidemiologists, he did a baseline survey of pathologists’ attitudes before primary diagnosis began, and he says he plans to repeat it annually. “Some of those things were valid,” he says. “And some of those beliefs changed once they saw what we were doing.”

They now send out digital controls, for instance. And in November he launched a digital case of the day, modeled after the CAP’s case of the month. Every morning a new case is sent out to pathologists, residents, and medical students, with a link to the whole slide image. The answer to the previous day’s case is also included. “We don’t keep track of the answers or who’s doing what,” he says. “But we do know that more and more people are clicking on the link and going to the digital image,” another step, he hopes, in encouraging adoption. It’s already created a large educational archive, he says, and it’s contributing to the organic growth of the program.

He’s also added a monthly tech round, which focuses primarily on digital pathology or something related to it. “It helps us tremendously to have these sessions, because people are learning, asking questions, and seeing how it will help them in their world.” One session dealt with creating high-resolution images from a digitally scanned slide for research, education, and publication. Another discussion focused on using an image analysis algorithm to look for very specific features in the digital image.

The potential uses keep piling up. With those million archived slides in their pocket, so to speak, Dr. Parwani and colleagues are trying to use the data sets and images to build algorithms for pathologists and researchers. “We want to help with very specific questions and applications,” he says, including bladder cancer staging, prostate cancer diagnosis, and finding cancer in lymph nodes.

They’re also partnering with OSU’s computer science and bioinformatics departments to build a core group of imaging experts for research projects. “We have submitted grants already,” he says. They’ve added a semester-long course for PhD students on pathology imaging and artificial intelligence. These “outside” groups bring their own buy-in, he says, and he’s seen an uptick in interest in the last year.

Even though Dr. Parwani has plenty of numbers handy, he says he mostly relies on a less formal gauge of success. He contends it’s not about the number of slides scanned, although given OSU’s archive, that might be a little like Bill Gates saying money doesn’t matter. But he persists, saying it’s not about the number of cases signed out by primary diagnosis, either. Instead, he offers a hopeful, apt metaphor, likening real achievement to people at one political extreme or the other moving themselves to the middle. “The people whom I least expect to adopt, when they adopt, that to me is a milestone.”

Dr. McClintock also takes the personal, well, professionally.

“We started by engaging the pathologists directly,” he says. Though Michigan has a separate pathology informatics division, he says he wanted the initiative to be sparked by AP. “So I’ve engaged the director of AP; I’ve engaged the director of surg path.” He’s also spoken with several of the department’s more active pathologists, and he encouraged them to attend the API meeting “so they could see what OSU is doing.”

Dr. McClintock says an early goal is to understand what makes pathologists hesitant. “What I’ve learned is that they don’t understand what it means to do digital pathology. So I’m going to do more education.” A key message will be: I’m not replacing your microscope. I’m not going to get rid of you. Instead, he wants to convey the message: We’re trying to build tools that will help you. How do you want to help us do that?

He also plans to work closely with vendors to identify products that will be mutually beneficial. And certainly there are business cases to be built.

“Are there ways for us to use whole slide imaging to generate more revenue or open up new business practices, besides just replacing what we’re doing now with glass?” he asks. He and his colleagues would like to build a good case for ROI, “though once you start moving forward and it becomes standard technology that everyone agrees is needed, it becomes more of an institutional mandate than a pathology informatics ask.”

Beyond the nitty-gritty lies an eternal challenge: It’s human nature to abhor change. “Your old system is the worst in the world,” Dr. McClintock says, until it’s changed. “And then everybody talks about what a great system it was. Change is hard.” With digital, it’s not a matter of merely swapping glass for pixels. “It’s changing the whole experience.”

As OSU pathologists continue to take their tentative steps to adoption, so have the institution’s leaders.

Those in the C-suite and IT were interested but cautious at first. They wanted to do it on a small scale, Dr. Parwani says, perhaps as a pilot project. Daniel Burnham they were not.

Interestingly, once executive leaders agreed to something more—more money, more capital, more people—that created more buy-in from pathologists. Little plans are more likely to fail, Dr. Parwani suggests. “Even if you have buy-in from the trenches, you are not going to move the rock. Let’s say I had 10 pathologists who wanted to do it. And then I go to the administration and ask for money, and they don’t approve it.” Pathologists might then feel betrayed, he says: You promised us something and didn’t deliver. But with an obvious commitment, “You’ve created the resource. Now it’s easier to convince people—they can touch it, they can feel it, they can see it.”

Dr. Parwani adds that he’s used this approach successfully throughout his career. “I don’t want to promise there will be something under the Christmas tree, and then it’s not there,” he jokes. “I always go out and get the toy first and show it to the kids.”

Dr. Frankel, as noted, secured initial C-suite buy-in before Dr. Parwani arrived, but as scope and specifics emerged and Dr. Parwani had to nail down funding, timelines, ROI, and the like, the higher-ups needed to be courted all over again.

“When you project something without specifics, the ask is very different,” he says. “So we had to fine-tune the proposal, put it in black and white, give them very detailed descriptions of the project”—not atypical of academic institutions, he notes, with their capital cycles and stringent application requirements. “You have to show what the clinical need is, and how it’s going to help the department and the institution.”

Looking back, he says he wishes he had done at least one thing differently. “The biggest thing I’ve learned is to engage IT from the beginning,” he says. If IT doesn’t “see the vision, or they don’t see exact infrastructure and details, they may not play ball with you,” he says. He calls this realization “eye-opening.” IT is no longer a cost center, he says; rather, it’s part of the strategic growth when designing information systems. If the digital pathology project did not meet the strategic growth plans of IT (as well as other affected departments), “it would not get the traction it needed.”

He learned this the hard way, saying he took IT buy-in for granted. “We had the money—why wouldn’t they agree with us that this was good?” he says with a laugh. Pathology and IT are now strong partners, he says, but the mistake (his word) brought delays.

For all the careful planning, Dr. Parwani says he continues to be surprised “every day” by how the system evolves and as new uses appear. They are now using digital pathology for QA reviews. Previously, at the end of the month, a technician would pull hundreds of slides, match the paperwork, make and send folders for pathologists, and compile the information—but this has decreased significantly. Now, several pathologists review QA cases simply by clicking on a link to the slides.

“I still have a microscope in my office,” he says. “But probably very soon it will be gone.”

Karen Titus is CAP TODAY contributing editor and co-managing editor.