The Future of Pathology

Nancy Johnson
0:00

Welcome to PATH News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Nancy Johnson. It's Monday, June 29th. Here are a few of the stories we're working on this week. How can pathologists strengthen quality control in the lab and improve patient care? We revisit the legacy of Dr. James Westgard, the pioneer whose Westgard rules became the international standard for lab quality control. CAP26 plenary speaker, Dr. Yuri Fedoriw, takes us inside the realities of running a pathology and research lab in Malawi. In part two of our interview, he fills us in on where HIV and lymphoma cases stand right now and shares how the work they're doing is changing lives. And a high school intern turns pathology slides into art, creating a one-of-a-kind coloring book with a bigger mission. Listen to the latest CAP Foundation podcast to hear her story. But first, in today's story, the future of cancer care may no longer depend solely on discovering new drugs, but on identifying which patients will actually benefit from them. But what if the work of the pathologist became the beginning of the whole story? Guiding treatment decisions and predicting outcomes.

Dr. Rajendra Singh
1:43

We are sitting on all this data, like the pathology, the slide data, the blood work, the molecular data, the spatial data, the all the data is in pathology. If we allow other people to come and take, take this data away and use it, then this is a big, big mistake on the pathology leadership and the pathologist.

Nancy Johnson
2:02

Artificial intelligence may be central to that leadership. Dr. Singh is the founder of Path Presenter, a platform that connects hundreds of thousands of users with pathology information worldwide. He helped the CAP bring groundbreaking AI models to CAP 25 last year, allowing pathologists to play an experiment for the first time. What's coming next is that pathologists will be able to test the platforms using their own data.

Speaker 1
2:31

The reason is like just like a simple example, you look at ER, which is estrogen receptor in breast. There are like at least seven different AI models currently available on the AI studio. I think at least four of them are available on the AI studio. Now, all of the models are good. It is not that one model is better than the other. All of them are pretty good, they have been tested, but when it comes to my data, all four of them are not going to work.

Nancy Johnson
2:59

While some pathologists fear AI taking their jobs, Dr. Singh believes the future is bright for pathologists who can unlock the power of AI.

Speaker 1
3:09

There is a lot of AI models that can now predict whether a patient is going to develop metastasis in five years, whether this treatment is going to be good for the patient or not. Will it be effective for the patient or not? Basically. So we definitely, if we can take the leadership and take charge of all this, our role is going to actually expand rather than like decrease. Because now you're not only providing a diagnosis, you are now becoming part of the strategy team. Like I said, moving away from a service specialty to a strategy specialty.

Nancy Johnson
3:38

Be sure to check out Dr. Singh's LinkedIn blog posts where he shares his thoughts about the future of the specialty after attending the recent American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting. We link to those in the show notes, along with information on the CAP's AI studio. That does it for the Daily Edition. Share this newscast with your social media network. If you're watching this video on YouTube, hit the like button and leave a comment. And if you've got a story we should be covering, write to us at stories at CAP.org. We're back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Nancy Johnson. Have a great day.