Item: Definiens has just announced the date for the First Annual Definiens International Symposium. It will be held on October 7-8, 2010, in Madrid. There is no charge to attend the event. Speaker and attendees are expected from international institutions, bio-pharmaceutical companies, industry partners, and the global healthcare industry. Sessions will include the following topics:
- Digital pathology image analysis
- Cell, confocal, and small animal image analysis
- The developer perspective: Image analysis solution strategies
Item: Pathology Visions, a long-running educational event, was initially launched as an Aperio user group, then morphed into a broad multi-vendor-supported conference. After the last conference in 2009, control was turned over to a newly-formed trade association, the Digital Pathology Association (DPA).
Item: BioImagene has established a Digital Pathology Video Gallery from which one is able to view presentations by eminent pathologists discussing various use cases of digital pathology including whole slide imaging, quantitative image analysis, and remote consultations. The talks currently available were delivered in the BioImagene booth at the USCAP annual meeting 2010.
There is a common theme to all of these items. The digital pathology companies are all aggressively embracing the concept of client education. This is a necessary component of their business models because the adoption of digital pathology does not always make economic sense when compared to traditional histopathology (see: Philips Enters the Still Embryonic U.S. Digital Pathology Market). A key aspect of the adoption strategy by new clients is that there is momentum toward this new technology and it's better to adopt it sooner rather than later. Academic pathology centers also understand that offering emerging technology is critical for attracting the best residents and fellows. Client education is thus critical in order to reach out to these early adopters.
I look upon these developments in a very positive light. Despite the fact that many of these digital pathology educational events have a bit of a commercial twinge, they still provide competition for conferences presented by pathology societies and academic institutions. In fact, for-profit companies have taken the lead in the use of new teaching technologies such as webinars and YouTube postings (see: Definiens Takes Advantage of Social Media Sites for Marketing and CME). I believe that these initiative will soon be enthusiastically copied by others.
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