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“Depending on how you are able to extract your data, you might only be able to extract the most recent value, but for regulatory purposes you may need to have the original report values available, as well as an audit trail of any changes to the final report,” she says. In that example, the informatics team would have to retrieve the historical data and find a way to make it available in its original form, which could mean creating a PDF of the original report.

Addenda and amendments to laboratory reports are similarly challenging because the time stamps and change trails need to be preserved, Dr. Stoffel says.

IT staff and laboratorians need to work together to ensure archived reports are consistent with the source data. In the archiving project nearing completion at M Health Fairview, the lab team provided checklists of essential data elements from the legacy system that needed to be included in archived reports and research extracts. The LIS archiving team then reviewed each re-created report example with laboratory and research stakeholders to ensure the information was represented correctly.

The process of archiving data from an LIS in parallel with setting up and implementing a new system to replace the legacy LIS could take three to five years, Dr. Stoffel says.

During that time, IT and lab department staff involved in the undertaking may leave and project requirements may change.

Consequently, Dr. Stoffel suggests revisiting goals annually to make sure the project stays on track. She also advises showing end users a demo or screenshots of the archive as early as possible and then on a regular basis to obtain their feedback and alleviate anxiety about the project. In addition, Dr. Stoffel recommends saving as much documentation as possible, including a detailed list of project requirements, project meeting notes, and even screenshots of legacy system software application user interfaces to remember how they were structured.

Documentation is not only valuable if staff leave before the project ends or if the lab has retained licensing to further configure its archiving system over a set time period, she says, but it will come in handy down the road, when the lab has to replace its replacement LIS.

“Just because the last life cycle was 20 years,” Dr. Stoffel adds, “we don’t know for sure if it’s going to be that long before we’re doing this again.”

—Renee Caruthers

Pramana undertakes new business ventures

The artificial intelligence-enabled health technology company Pramana recently announced collaborations with Caris Life Sciences, Intermountain Health, Gestalt Diagnostics, and Techcyte.

• Pramana reported that it will digitize approximately 1.5 million slides annually under a multi-year agreement with Caris Life Sciences. The companies will integrate Pramana’s scanning systems and software with Caris’ molecular science and AI tools for comprehensive molecular profiling.
• Pramana announced a multi-year partnership with the nonprofit Intermountain Health system under which the entities will build digital archives for anatomic pathology. As part of the deal, Pramana will digitize approximately 8 million glass slides from Intermountain’s biorepository using the vendor’s Spectral family of scanners and intelligent-acquisition software.
• Pramana and Gestalt Diagnostics have introduced an integrated digital and AI-powered platform that combines Gestalt’s mitotic cell-counting algorithm with Pramana’s Spectral family of scanners. The joint solution has an open DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) interface.
• Pramana has entered a strategic collaboration with Techcyte to provide intelligent volumetric scanning and digital diagnostics solutions for cytology, microbiology, and hematology applications. The collaboration will integrate Pramana’s Spectral HT and Spectral M intelligent whole slide imaging systems with Techcyte’s AI-powered diagnostics software platform to provide scalable digitization of cytology and microbiology diagnostic workflows, including specimens that are hard to scan.

NovoPath and PathAI offer webinar on streamlining pathology workflows

NovoPath and PathAI have released a webinar explaining how digital pathology and artificial intelligence can streamline pathology workflows and how some of the largest U.S. laboratories are applying these applications.

The webinar, titled “Digital pathology and artificial intelligence 101: unlocking value from the AP LIS,” features Eric Walk, MD, chief medical officer for PathAI; Jim Sweeney, president of PathAI Diagnostics; R. Shawn Kinsey, MD, medical director of PathAI Diagnostics; and Ed Youssef, chief strategy officer for NovoPath.

The webinar is available at www.novopath.com/webinar/webinar-amplify-the-value-of-your-ap-lis.

Leica Biosystems enhances digital pathology scanner

Leica Biosystems has released three more product features for its Aperio GT 450 digital pathology scanner for the research setting.

The new enhancements include automatic narrow stripe scanning, a quality control feature that triggers the scanner to automatically rescan a slide when the system detects image-quality issues resulting from a tilted slide or tilted tissue; Z-stack scanning, which produces a composite, three-dimensional image that enables users to review slide samples at varying degrees of thickness; and space-saving 20 × magnification.

The scanner is available for research use only.

Leica Biosystems, 312-565-6737

Ibex Medical Analytics and Roche enter partnership

Roche has reported that it will offer Ibex Medical Analytics’ artificial intelligence algorithms for breast and prostate cancer diagnosis via its Navify digital pathology software platform.

Ibex’s algorithms, which can be used in prioritizing cases, determining cancer grading and subtyping, and identifying noncancerous entities, are used worldwide but are for research use only in the United States. They are CE-marked for in vitro diagnostic use in Europe for breast and prostate cancer detection in multiple workflows.

Navify and the algorithms run on Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure.

Roche Digital Pathology, 800-428-5074

Dr. Aller practices clinical informatics in Southern California. He can be reached at rayaller@gmail.com. Dennis Winsten is founder of Dennis Winsten & Associates, Healthcare Systems Consultants. He can be reached at dennis.winsten@gmail.com.