Newsbytes

NovoPath has had a nice relationship with Allscripts. Is that relationship ongoing?
It is ongoing. It’s healthy. We are hoping to expand that partnership.

Let me turn to the market your customers and potential customers are living in. We know that COVID has dominated everyone’s thinking, planning, and budgeting, in many cases. But one thing about the AP market is that it seems to be consolidating among the pathology groups. In other words, groups are getting together, they tend to be getting bigger, they tend to be serving ever-larger systems in laboratories or in hospital systems. Is this something you see? And are you planning to help capture clients coming out of this change in the environment?
It is something we see. Digital pathology will likely facilitate this transition. We have customers now looking at this strategy in 2021 or 2022. And a lot of bigger laboratories are going to be doing this going forward. NovoPath, again, is an industry leader when it comes to digital pathology as the first LIS to integrate in an operational environment with a WSI vendor. Today, we have integrations with the major WSI vendors.

Our platform, especially as we are now moving to the cloud, is well positioned to benefit from this transformation.

What do you have to say to the smaller pathology group, a group that is facing the future perhaps with some anxiety not only because of consolidation—the fear they may not be able to maintain their independence or ability to steer their business—but also their needs for such specialization?
We’re not focused on one type of customer; we are looking at some of the smaller labs, and we provide excellent service to them. Community hospitals up to medical schools, up to universities, and up to very large reference labs—we span the gamut of the marketplace. We are global and we are working with companies overseas and in Canada and so on. So if there is a laboratory out there that’s looking for technology and service and that type of thing, it doesn’t matter how small they are or how large they are or where they’re located, et cetera—we can accommodate their needs.

We have customers that are trying to work with the more advanced features and solutions, like digital pathology, sample tracking, and the case distribution manager. But we also have customers who are not at that level yet. NovoPath can come in with you as a partner at any stage and help you achieve your aims. Our solution serves many different types of customers and that makes NovoPath unique.

As you have more customers, you learn more about the marketplace, and you are optimizing your product. And then every other customer is benefiting from it. In technology, this is called a network effect. That’s how a company like Google works. The more people search, the more keywords are searched, the better the algorithm. That benefit doesn’t just go to Google, it also goes to the audience of Google.

Before Victoriaside bought NovoPath, as I spoke to customers, there were many times I heard them say, “One thing I like about NovoPath is the personalized service and attention that I get as a customer.” The customer wants to feel special. And we have a history of treating our partners well, of providing personalized service. We want to expand our team to keep doing that so our customers can keep feeling that personalized service. We truly want to work with them as equal partners as we navigate through the transitional laboratory marketplace.

LigoLab operating platform supports pooled testing

The LigoLab laboratory information system operating platform provides pooled testing capability.

“Within a matter of minutes, users are able to accurately map a 96-well plate with multiple specimens in each well, and this allows for seamless tracking of the pooled samples all the way through to resulting,” said LigoLab CEO Suren Avunjian, in a press release.

The LigoLab platform maps multiple specimens in a well by scanning specimen IDs and using a visual representation of a rack that includes each well on a plate. The scanned barcodes and other relevant case information populate in each well on the computer screen. The system then creates a CSV file and automatically transmits it to the testing instrument. In the absence of an interface, a system operator generates the file and uploads it to the instrument.

After processing, the results are sent back to the LigoLab platform, at which point a laboratorian can manually review all results and release those that are negative, or the lab can configure the system to automatically release negative results. Pooled samples that are positive or inconclusive are rerun as individual samples.

“The platform is designed for high-volume testing and integrates with a variety of systems, instruments, robotics, and other automation platforms to allow for quick, streamlined, and error-free processing,” Avunjian said.

LigoLab, 818-395-4659

JPC contracts with Proscia and Huron Digital Pathology

The federal government’s Joint Pathology Center has selected Proscia’s Concentriq digital and computational pathology platform and Huron Digital Pathology’s Lagotto image search engine to modernize its tissue repository.

The center, a part of the U.S. Defense Health Agency, will use Concentriq to digitize its tissue archive, the world’s largest and nation’s oldest repository of human pathology specimens. “With Concentriq, JPC will provide its network of researchers with intuitive, secure access to its data and streamline collaboration, enabling them to more easily analyze thousands of diseases and find new ways to fight them,” according to a press release from Proscia.

The Joint Pathology Center will use Huron’s artificial intelligence-enabled Lagotto image search engine to index and search the center’s digital image archive. “JPC will use Lagotto to unlock the wealth of knowledge housed in the JPC’s repository to enhance biomedical research for infectious diseases and cancer and enable easier data sharing with researchers, diagnosticians, and educators to facilitate collaboration and medical advances,” Huron reported.

The Joint Pathology Center assumed many of the responsibilities of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology when the AFIP was disestablished. It houses more than 55 million glass slides, 31 million paraffin-embedded tissue blocks, and over 500,000 wet tissue samples collected over more than 100 years.

Proscia, 877-255-1341
Huron Digital Pathology, 519-886-9013

Orchard offering AWS cloud-based platform

Orchard Software has added Amazon Web Services as a cloud-based hosting solution for its Orchard Harvest laboratory information system. Long-time client Northwest Alabama Cancer Center has transitioned to Orchard Cloud Services using AWS, according to an Orchard press release.

Orchard Software, 800-856-1948

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.