The Daily Scan

Dr. John Steele honored by CAP with Lifetime Achievement Award

Dr. John Steel, chief of clinical pathology and as a consulting physician at the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and medical director of the molecular section of MCG’s Georgia Esoteric and Molecular Laboratory, is being honored with a lifetime achievement award at this week's College of American Pathologists annual convention, in San Diego.

It was knowing what he didn't want to do for the rest of his life that led John Steele to his career. He was a freshman at Duke University in 1967 with intentions of becoming a mathematician. But his longtime love of science won out and he changed his major to chemistry, graduated summa cum laude in 1971, then enrolled in Duke's M.D./Ph.D. program.

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The College of American Pathologists’ Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2006 to honor the “unsung heroes” of the organization. Ten awards are given annually to members who have made an impact on the profession by contributing to the College in one or more areas over an extended period of time.

Congratulations to Dr. Steel!

How Not to Conduct an On-Site LIS Demo

Bruce Friedman posted How Not to Conduct an On-Site LIS Demo, an interesting article which makes some great points.  He starts by linking an interesting post by Jason Calacanis, how to conduct a demo, which makes the following points:

"Horrible ways to start your presentation: a) Talk about your bio and your business accomplishments. (We don’t care, we can talk about that later if your product is any good.) b) Talk about the market size. (We don’t care, we can talk about that later if your product is any good.) c) Give an overview of the competitive landscape. (We don’t care, we can talk about that later if your product is any good.)"

Truly you have to show the product, that is what the customers need to see.  However I do take issue with the point about not starting with your bio, and I commented on Bruce's blog:

I liked and agree with Jason Calacanis' suggestions for how to give a demo too.  But in my opinion there's more to forming a relationship with a new customer than selling a product.  A key part is selling yourself and your company.

Giving a brief bio and and overview of your company is *not* a bad way to start, it sets up the discussion about how you can work with your customer, and the value you can deliver.  The product is part of that value, but the relationship includes more than *just* the product.

This is particularly true for LIS and digital pathology systems where you are integrating a new product into an existing workflow.  To be successful a lot of learning, consulting, configuring, and training has to take place over and above the feature set of the product.  Having a good relationship with your customer is important to make that happen.

We've definitely adopted this philosophy at Aperio.  We do show the product - right away, because it is so cool (!) - but we also take time to talk about ourselves, who we are, and our approach.  That helps start the relationship with a new customer...

Your comments on this are eagerly solicted!

getting paid by the number of lymph nodes

Keith Kaplan read this article on My Way News: Few hospitals meet colon cancer care standard, and concludes that in the future, pathologists might be paid by the number of lymph nodes.

"Surgeons frequently tell of getting a pathology report of four clean nodes and asking the pathologist to find more, "and lo and behold, one of those additional nodes turns out to be positive," Bilimoria said."

"But he expects more 12-node checks soon, saying the National Quality Forum recently listed the standard as a sign of quality care and that at least one insurance giant has begun requiring proof of 12-node checks before listing surgeons as preferred providers."

"Meanwhile, he advises patients to ask about the 12-node check in choosing a surgeon and to check their pathology report to be sure it was done."

This is always the problem with examining slides, no matter how careful and thorough you are, there can be something you missed.  It is hard to examine a whole slide at high resolution, and of course a slide only contains one section of the tissue block.  This is one of the opportunities for digital pathology, to automate screening as a safety net to help eliminate false negatives.

Medicine 2.0

You may have heard the term "Medicine 2.0", what is it?

Well, first, it is an annual conference, the first incarnation of which recently took place in Toronto.  I wasn't able to go but really wanted to, and definitely plan to go next year.  (Keith Kaplan posted an interesting recap of his attendance.)  According to the conference organizers, here's another answer:

Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies as well as semantic web and virtual reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups.

The "Web 2.0" in the definition lends its suffix to the term Medicine 2.0, and while not exact describes a general set of technologies that allow people to interact online, forming relationships and exchanging information.  Increasingly that information can include pathology data and images, and that's where Aperio and digital pathology come in...  essentially we make tools that enable Medicine 2.0.

Stay tuned, I'm sure you'll hear a lot more about this in the future :)

 

"Stand Up to Cancer" tops Friday ratings, raises $100M

Reuters reports "Stand Up to Cancer" tops Friday ratings:

The industrywide "Stand Up to Cancer" telethon averaged 10.3 million viewers during its hour-long simulcast on ABC, NBC and CBS Friday.  On a Friday night at 8 p.m. before the new broadcast TV season began, the ratings weren't expected to be blockbuster, but the show was the night's most-watched show on broadcast TV, according to preliminary data released Sunday by Nielsen Media Research.

And more importantly, the show raised $100M to fight cancer. 

A television celebrity fund-raiser aimed at accelerating research into the treatment of cancer has helped raise more than $100 million, organizers of the "Stand Up To Cancer" group said on Monday. Cancer survivors Christina Applegate, Patrick Swayze, Sheryl Crowe, cyclist Lance Armstrong and dozens of other celebrities took part in the one-hour special shown simultaneously on three U.S. television networks on Friday.

Wow, that's excellent.

By the way, it is not too late to donate :)

 

Poll: Does the election matter for digital pathology?

I'm trying something new here - a poll...

pollcode.com free polls

Does the election matter for digital pathology?

Yes Not really

...I promise not to follow up with a poll asking if you like polls :)