Newsbytes

“If you are going to train an algorithm, you need a high degree of assurance that the diagnosis is correct,” she adds. “One of the questions we’ve been asked was, ‘If you want to establish a diagnosis for a slide, how many reviewers do you need to look at the slide, and what level of expertise do they need to have?’”

To answer such questions, the working group is hoping to tap into the CAP’s performance improvement program for whole slide imaging to gain insight into how specific training and years of pathology practice experience influence pathologists’ ability to make accurate diagnoses from whole slide images. The program provides pathologists with sample digital slide images they can use to test whether they have reached correct diagnoses. It also has background data on participants, such as specific fellowship training and number of years in practice.

“If you were to analyze [such] data,” Dr. Stram says, “you could potentially develop a model that says, if you want a certain level of statistical assuredness in diagnoses, this is the kind and number of reviewers that you would want.”

—Renee Caruthers

Accumen announces purchase of Halfpenny Technologies

Accumen has acquired Halfpenny Technologies, a provider of clinical data-exchange and business-intelligence solutions, after a seven-year partnership.

Accumen provides hospitals and health care systems with solutions and services to enhance the value of their clinical lab, patient blood management, and outreach and imaging services.

Accumen, 855-222-8636

Indica Labs and Lunaphore comarket combined solution

Computational pathology software and services provider Indica Labs has announced a partnership with Lunaphore, a Swiss firm developing spatial biology technology for laboratories.

The companies will comarket a solution that combines Lunaphore’s flagship Comet spatial biology platform and Indica’s Halo and Halo AI digital pathology image-analysis software.

Lunaphore’s Comet platform allows researchers to detect up to 40 different spatial markers per tissue slide without human intervention. Indica Labs’ Halo and Halo AI software perform artificial intelligence-based quantitative analysis of whole slide images in a research setting.

“Combining Lunaphore’s superior multiplexing technologies upstream with our powerful AI-based analysis downstream, together we provide a streamlined workflow for high-dimensional imaging and image analysis,” said Steven Hashagen, CEO of Indica Labs, in a press statement.

Indica Labs, 505-492-0979

Oracle discloses plans to develop unified national EHR database

Shortly after Oracle closed its $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner last month, Oracle cofounder and chair Larry Ellison said in a public virtual presentation that “Cerner and Oracle have all the technology required to build a revolutionary health information management system in the cloud.”

The company plans to build a unified national electronic health records database of anonymized patient data collected from health care entities nationwide, said Ellison in “The Future of Healthcare” on-demand event. The system would continuously upload electronic health records from hospital databases to give providers real-time information about patients’ medical conditions and other clinical data. Patient information would remain anonymized until patients gave their providers access through a “key,” to prevent compromising data privacy and security, according to Ellison.

Furthermore, the database would provide public health officials with anonymized patient health data to generate such statistics as the number of hospital beds available in a geographic area or the number of COVID patients hospitalized within the past 24 hours.

Oracle also plans to update Cerner’s Millennium EHR system, Ellison said. Among the planned enhancements to the system is the addition of a voice user interface to simplify the process of accessing patient data and lab orders. In addition, the company plans to integrate into Millennium a telemedicine module and disease-specific artificial intelligence modules.

“We’re putting all of the diagnostic devices on a single Internet-of-Things network,” Ellison added. “And we’re keeping all of the diagnostic device results—all of the images and all the other data—in a database that we use for machine learning.”

Oracle, 800-633-0738

Gestalt and Hamamatsu install digital solution at Intermountain Healthcare

Gestalt and Hamamatsu Photonics have implemented a unified digital pathology solution at Intermountain Healthcare. The interoperable platform combines Gestalt’s PathFlow digital pathology system with Hamamatsu’s NanoZoomer whole slide scanner.

“Combining the flexibility, reliability, and durability of Hamamatsu’s latest generation scanning technology with Gestalt’s highly adaptable and interoperable image-management and reporting solution has been an ideal pairing,” said pathologist Dylan Miller, MD, coleader of the digital pathology implementation strategy at Intermountain Healthcare, in a press statement. “We are able to meet diverse and dynamic needs across multiple lab sites and pathology groups in our system, as we are rolling out digital pathology, because of this tremendous partnership.”

Gestalt, 509-492-4912

Dr. Aller practices clinical informatics in Southern California. He can be reached at raller@usc.edu. Dennis Winsten is founder of Dennis Winsten & Associates, Healthcare Systems Consultants. He can be reached at dwinsten.az@gmail.com.