The Critical Role of Pathology Informatics in the Practice of Pathology

On October 3, 2018, I delivered a lecture at the ASCP Annual Meeting in Baltimore entitled: Using Informatics to Address Five Major Challenges in Pathology. You can view a PDF version of the lecture here. At the beginning of the lecture, I listed five major trends in healthcare. They are listed below:

1. This is golden era of diagnostics, affecting primarily complex diseases like cancer
2. Decentralization of healthcare away from hospitals & toward consumers
3. Rising tide of consumerism; patients will need to be treated more like customers
4. Computer-driven analytics are changing the style and content of pathology reports
5. For-profit companies like CVS, Apple, & Google beginning to reshape healthcare

In the summation of the lecture, I presented five major challenges flowing from the above trends that relate specifically to the practice of pathology and I list them below:

1. Translation of cancer genomic & molecular pathology test results into actionable information for clinicians
2. Deployment of predictive diagnostics results into most pathology reports
3. Total automation of anatomic pathology with integration of digital pathology into AP workflow
4. Conversion of most healthcare processes, including surgery, to ambulatory settings with the majority of interactions supported by telemedicine
5. Integration of lab data from "wearables” & home testing devices into LIS & EHR

As you review this list of challenges for pathology, you will notice that each item is at least partly or almost totally intertwined with information technology (IT). This should not come as a surprise because healthcare delivery and research is information rich and IT is about managing information. The inescapable conclusion from all of this is that all pathologists need to be well versed in IT and all pathology teaching programs need to introduce IT as a major component. If this does not occur quickly, the informatics portion of the practice of pathology will be ceded to other physicians in healthcare systems and/or to the central IT units in these organizations that support the EHR.