July 30, 2026
Focus on Compliance | College of American Pathologists
From ‘Lost Cause’ to Gold Rush: Biotechs Swarm to Cure AATDÂ
When Physicians and AI Work Together, Who is Accountable? How to Lay Out Medical Liability
Transcript
Elizabeth McMahon
Keeping pace with evolving expectations in anatomic pathology lab compliance. An upcoming webinar has the latest guidance. Plus, who's responsible for mistakes when doctors and AI work together? A new proposal helps physicians work through the layers of liability. This is Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Thursday, July 30th. Is your anatomic pathology lab ready for inspection day? With evolving rules and standards for this testing specialty, it can be hard to keep current on the latest compliance expectations, but an August 19th CAP webinar can help.
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Elizabeth McMahon
Robin Olney, Medical Director for the Outpatient Lab at Baylor, Scott, and White Health in Dallas says the session aims to ensure that anyone who manages an anatomic pathology lab has the latest knowledge for the CAP checklists. Experts will focus on a few objectives.
Dr. Robyn Olney
The first one is to help talk about the common validation strategies for anatomic pathology for various testing modalities like immunohistochemistry, fish, processor validations. And the reason for that is sometimes there are the anatomic pathology laboratories are confused about how many cases to include in a validation study. They're confused about whether that is dependent upon an FDA-approved assay or a laboratory-developed test, or whether the marker is used as a diagnostic marker or predictive marker.
Elizabeth McMahon
Anatomic pathology labs also need updated guidance on proficiency testing given recently streamlined CAP checklists. Dr. Olney says one example is predictive immunohistochemistry markers, which detect proteins in tissue samples that help forecast how patients will respond to therapy.
Dr. Robyn Olney
The main thing that happened was they moved the interpretation of predictive immunhistochemistry markers under the scope of service for pathologists. And what this did was it removed the requirement for alternative proficiency testing for pathologists who work at a site that only does interpretation of IHCs, but they don't actually make the IHCs in their lab. And this is becoming a more and more common situation for healthcare systems and laboratories that have kind of a distributed histology model where the slides are made in a centralized place and they're interpreted at various sites or digitally.
Elizabeth McMahon
Register for the session and learn about the CME credits available under the events link on the CAP homepage. You can find an archive of compliance webinars by searching for Focus on Compliance at the CAP homepage. Who is medically liable when AI and physicians work together? It's a question posed by an international group of researchers in the journal Nature this week. Noting new patient safety risks that come with AI tools in healthcare, the authors urge clinicians and institutions to organize standards and safe processes before AI tools advance from synthesizing data to acting on it with less human input. They propose a plan inspired by regulations used in the aircraft and car industries. The plan defines seven levels of AI capabilities, from those that rely heavily on human input to those with autonomy and automation to help the medical community form a basis for defining risks around medical AI tools. The misspelling, or a mutation in the normal DNA sequence, causes the liver to produce a mutant version of a protein that normally travels through the bloodstream and protects the lungs from damage. The mutated proteins build up inside the liver and can eventually cause organ failure. Several gene editing tools can now tweak individual letters of DNA or RNA, making AATD a prime candidate for a race among biotech firms to cure it. Stat News has the full story of the contentious race and its implications for other rare diseases. And finally, taking your place in the spotlight. The last free CAP media training session of the year is right around the corner. If you speak with reporters or present publicly, the webinar on August 21st will give you the skills you need to deliver clear, memorable messages and stay composed under pressure. You'll get examples of interview techniques from fellow members and gain insights into how the media works and what reporters look for. Register for the session at the CAP Events page. That's all for today's Daily Edition. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. Got a story you'd like us to cover on the Daily Edition? Write to us at stories at cap.org. We're back at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.