CIPI Connections: Insights, Updates, and the People Behind the Innovation

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
Welcome to CIPI Connections, the podcast of the College of American Pathologists' Council on Informatics and Pathology Innovation. Here, we connect you with the leaders and committees shaping the future of pathology.

Dr. Giovanni Lujan:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first episode of CIPI Connections. I'm Dr. Giovanni Lujan. I am a member of the Committee of Digital and Computational Pathology. I will be your co-host for the CIPI podcast. For this first episode, we have the chair of CIPI, Dr. de Baca. She's with us today, and I will have the privilege of asking her some questions. Dr. de Baca, can you share with our listeners a little bit about your background and what first drew you to pathology informatics and innovation?

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
Sure thing. Thanks, Giovanni. Pathology is amazing, first of all. It's the only place in medicine where you get paid to put together puzzles. Those puzzles can be visual or they can be data or they can be communication and words. I like puzzles and I like putting them together. I like also knowing that we do something that's so absolutely pivotal in getting information to other colleagues and to other people in the House of Medicine and especially to patients. And this information is what drives their diagnoses. Everybody listening knows this. But how do you make things better? And that's where the innovation comes in. I used to get in trouble from my mother because she would ask me to do the chores and it was nine o'clock on Saturday morning and I would hear what my chore was and I would sit around and sit around and she would be like could you please clean the bathroom? And I would think about it for a really long time. And then I would go and I would get it all done in light speed because I had figured out the best way to do it. And the next time I had to do the bathroom, I would think about how could I have done it even faster? But I think that it's the idea of how do you make things better? Where do you figure out what the gaps are or the places where improvement would help either your life or your colleagues' experience or the patient outcome. And so we just keep trying to do things better and be creative in that endeavor.

Dr. Giovanni Lujan:
Can you tell us a little bit about your professional background?

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
I'm originally from Iowa. I did a bachelor's degree at Iowa State University, and then I went to Argentina for medical school. After that, the wall fell down in Germany, and I wanted to do ophthalmology. So I started learning German the day that the wall fell down, and nine months later, I was in an ophthalmology residency in Germany. Later, I also completed a fellowship in retinal surgery and then because of Visa issues, I came back to the United States where I needed to retrain. And I got a job in pathology. So at Thomas Jefferson University, I did the four years of AP/CP and then a hematopathology fellowship. A through line in this whole story is that my father was a big data guy, and I learned to type my name on an old computer card typewriter. So I had these computer cards, they're about, you know, eight by four or something, and I knew that the holes in that punch card were my name. I thought that was a really amazing thing. So I've been thinking about data since I can remember. And the world of pathology... And the world of data are so intertwined that this is just the obvious place for me to live.

Dr. Giovanni Lujan:
Wow. That's a really wow story. And I had listened to it before, to that introduction. And I said, wow, then. And I said, say wow again today. It's a great story. But to the present, you are the chair of... CIPI, and that's Charlie, India, Papa, India. And so, can you explain to our listeners, especially those who are not familiar with the College of American Pathologists organization, what exactly... Are you chair of? What's the council? And what are the committees that compose the council?

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
Yeah, thank you. The College of American Pathologists, if we make their family tree, there's the, and we'll make it patriarchal, there's the board at the very top, and underneath the board are now six councils, and under... each council is a group of committees that have something in common and the committees respond up to the council which responds to the board and all the way back down again so people will know that we have a council on accreditation and there's a council on education and there's a council of government and professional affairs and i won't go through all of them the CIPI stands for the Council on Informatics and Pathology Innovation. There are five constituent committees of CIPI. They are AI, Digital and Computational Pathology, Informatics, Pathology Electronic Reporting, or PERT, and the Cancer Committee. And these are subject matter expert committees that deal with those specific things. People might ask themselves, why was the cancer committee there? And the reason that the Cancer Committee belongs to CIPI is because they work hand in glove with the Electronic Reporting Committee. And they've created tools to work together to write the cancer protocols, which are then made into electronic format by the PERT Committee. So having a Council for Informatics gives people in these areas more voice and more light than we had before the council was formed. It's very timely that we have this because, as you know in your practice in digital pathology or other listeners who are incorporating AI, this is becoming a very integral part of our profession and it was really time for there to be a focus and a focused area in the CAP that would allow us to talk about the state of the art, the state of the future of the art, to talk about how to help identify gaps with pathologists who are in all different places in their career trajectory, and to make sure that the people who are at the very beginning of their learnings in pathology learn the things that they need to know, and the people who are at the very end of their practice also learn the things that they need to know. And every person will have a different experience and different needs, which we hope to be able to help accommodate.

Dr. Giovanni Lujan:
That's a great explanation. I think everybody now knows what CIPI is and what the different committees are. Now let's talk about this podcast. Tell me, what can our listeners expect from this podcast? And how did the idea came to life?

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
The idea, first of all, is, in my opinion, quite hilarious because I had sent an email to Shannon Hoekstra, who's the lead staffer from CIPI, saying we should do a podcast. We should do little vignettes or little outtakes of each of our committees so that people understand what's the phenotype of a... member of this council or what is the most timely thing that we would like people to hear about what the artificial intelligence committee is doing or etc and and suggested that we should perhaps get the junior members from those committees to be the interviewers because they can ask every question that they'd like and at about the same time that Shannon and I were going to talk about this, you sent me an email that said, hey, I think we should do a podcast from CIPI, and we should talk about what all of the different committees are doing. And the words were almost identical and caused me a great deal of glee when I saw them, especially when it also said, oh, and I'd love to work on it. So here we are, both of us in the room. We're bringing this idea together, and we hope to do a series at least monthly of podcasts. There'll be little short snippets that you can listen to in the car or while you're waiting for a frozen section. And it will tell you something about either the subject matter or the subject matter expert for the committee or the council of the month. And then if we're lucky, maybe you and I will have a chance to do some extra outtakes and I can ask you questions about digital pathology because I know very little about it. And maybe there are other people who would like to find out what I don't know and what other people do know and learn that way. So I'm really excited to do this.

Dr. Giovanni Lujan:
Oh, me too. Thank you for including me in this project. I'm very excited too. And I think, as you mentioned, having this podcast is very timely because all the subject areas are so important, changing so much, and it's on everybody's mind. Everybody in pathology right now is thinking about either the transition into digital pathology, the adoption of AI, of course went this means for cancer, for cancer reporting and everything is of course within the umbrella of informatics which is taking over not only medicine and pathology but entire world now. It's just different how it's not just a tool it's just the way we practice and so I think yes learning from each other. and giving a platform to our members, so to the different members of the committees to introduce themselves, talk about their passions. And I think sharing that probably will create or will instill that passion in more members because we need more people to work on this. So thank you for that. And so tell us, what's your vision with this podcast? What can the listeners expect in terms of the format and the frequency everything that you want to share with us of your vision so format i think that there'll be roughly

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
10 minute episodes there will usually be a host and an interviewee sometimes it will be you or me and sometimes it would be other people from the council We hope that there will be something that happens monthly as a regular cadence and there may be new things that come in. Again, first of all, this year I think it's to introduce the council and what we do and then to start talking about topics that may be of interest to pathologists.

Dr. Giovanni Lujan:
I think that's a good first episode, a very good introduction to you and to your work and to what you are. all the different committees that are under the council that you lead. So I think everybody can expect great things coming through this podcast. Every committee works on very important topics. Crucial, I will say, for the future, not only of pathology, but of medicine, as we all work to improve patient care. And I think that we, being on the cutting edge of technology, we have a lot of things to share with you. And we hope to engage our listeners to bring questions, ideas, and everything. Thank you, Dr. de Baca, for your time today.

Dr. M. E. de Baca:
Thanks, Dr. Lujan. This was great fun.

Thanks for joining us for Insights, Updates, and the People Behind the Innovation. This has been CIPI Connections, where ideas meet action in pathology.