Technology Paving Path For Digital Pathology

As the healthcare standards keep rising, the need and demand to revamp pathology is even more evident than in recent times.

- Reetika Bose

Pathology is one of the most significant mainstays of the healthcare ecosystem. Thanks to the paradigm shift in the healthcare segment that led revolution of digital pathology. For the past 150 years, pathology has been the essence of the health sector with pathology being at the forefront in understanding and diagnosing diseases for decades. While the medical industry has been blessed with incredible technology and unbelievable innovation on other fronts, the core of the diagnosis process continues to incline heavily on pathologists in labs.

Talking about tackling the digital pathology space, Dr Jayaram N Iyengar, Managing Director, Neuberg Diagnostics said, “The scenario is complex with high establishment cost of digital scanners on one hand and relative paucity of experts in histopathology on the other. Trained and competent pathologists would not prefer to work in tier 2 cities and district health centres. Establishing a laboratory equipped with trained technicians and a digitisation equipment would facilitate study of the digitised slides by any expert pathologist anywhere in the country.”

As the healthcare standards keep rising, the need and demand to revamp pathology is even more foreseen than in recent times. Pathology needs to be ahead of time which will directly imply the capacity to work faster and with more productivity. In that lies the ascent of rise of digital pathology.

“Introduction of low-cost scanners albeit with acceptable shortcomings compared with the high throughput equipment, would be the way forward”, Dr Iyengar added.

DIGITAL PATHOLOGY OVER CONVENTIONAL PATHOLOGY

In spite of witnessing the quick advancement of innovative medical technology such as blood-drawing robots, augmented reality, synthetic tissues, and machine-run organs, pathology continues to depend on the similar old technique of looking at tissues with a microscope within laboratory walls.