Is it time for Pathology to join the Digital Revolution?

So, it seems to me rather strange – incredible even – that most pathology specimens are still stored on glass slides. Glass slides can now be captured digitally and the approval by the FDA in 2017 for the use of digitised whole slide images should have ushered in a paradigm shift in the assessment of pathological specimens. Well, it seems that the move from analogue to digital pathology requires significant change to the processes and workflows involved. The traditional approach to analysing glass haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slides is time-consuming and painstaking work. This shortage of pathologists, coupled with the huge expense of managing glass slide specimens, slows down the process of diagnosis and treatment, with a significant impact on patient outcomes. Here at Cambridge Consultants, we are working on ways to address this issue, with AI and hardware projects aimed at digitising and managing pathology specimens in a smarter, swifter way. What’s needed is high-resolution digital images taken from glass slides, which would be interactive and easy to share. An obvious place to start is oncology, where the acquisition and processing of samples is extremely time-sensitive, and pathologists are under pressure to provide results to clinicians. In our work on this area here, we have developed a project called BacillAi. The project combines pathology with AI to successfully measure TB infection in patients and monitor the progression of the disease. I firmly believe that now is the time for AI, machine learning and better hardware to revolutionise pathology, saving countless lives.