The Daily Scan

store 10,000 digital slides (2TB) for $299

Engadget reports Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Green hard drive launches.  This is a 2TB internal hard drive, with a suggested retail price of $299.  2TB will hold about 10,000 digital slides (assuming 200MB/slide, which is a fair average). 

This drive represents a new high water mark in capacity per unit cost, although it is just another data point on an ever ascending curve.  The ongoing decrease in the price of storage is one of the reasons digital pathology adoption is taking off.

Pathologist and Radiologists Head toward a Collision... or Will It Be a Collaboration!

From the Dark Report: Pathologist and Radiologists Head toward a Collision... or Will It Be a Collaboration!:

How much longer will anatomic pathologists spend the majority of their time in a quiet office, viewing glass slides through a microscope? Will radiologists and pathologists soon collaborate on diagnosing the patient and jointly releasing an integrated patient report to the referring physician?

Should you think these scenarios are several years into the future, you may be surprised to learn that first-mover pathology groups and radiology groups are in the earliest stages of fully-digital (non-glass) pathology and collaborative diagnosis/patient reporting. These pathologists and radiologists will tell you that this is an exciting time and they are advancing patient care because of these innovations.

Interesting...  Dr. Tawfik at University of Kansas is an Aperio customer, and we have been working closely with him on this study.  They knew having a Pathologist and Radiologist working together would be valuable, but they're surprised at just how valuable; they've found a number of cases where the diagnosis might have been different if they'd worked together in this way to reach it.

"stay hungry, stay foolish"

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Macintosh, I shared Steve Jobs' classic introduction with my colleagues at Aperio, and one of them pointed me to this YouTube video, Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005.  I had read excerpts from this speech but never seen it.  Some great wisdom and emotion packed into just 15 minutes.  I found it inspiring, and I hope you do too.

PS it is especially poignant given his current medical issues...

Kay Yow loses battle with cancer

Don't know why but this really hit me:  Kay Yow loses battle with cancer.

One of the most successful college basketball coaches ever, she battled breast cancer for 22 years, and finally lost.  So inspiring!  Makes me want to do whatever I can to help others like Kay Yow win.

Healthcare IT could nab $20B from Congress

According to HealthImaging, Healthcare IT could nab $20B from Congress:

Congress could spend $20 billion on healthcare IT over the next few years, according to an economic recovery bill released last week by the House Appropriations Committee.

Under the bill, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONCHIT) in the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) would receive $2 billion and “$20 billion overall for health[care] information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies,” according to the committee report accompanying the draft, reported Government Health IT.

The Senate is expected to draft its own language for the health IT portion of the bill.

I'm still not sure if we'll be able to spend our way out of the current economic slump, but if the government is going to spend money on infrastructure, Healthcare IT is certainly a deserving target.  And of course I have to add, digital pathology is an increasingly important part of healthcare IT :)

Congratulations to Dr. Arias-Stella; featured on a Peruvian stamp

I just wanted to extend my congratulations to Dr. Javier Arias-Stella, a distinguished Peruvian Pathologist who is working with Aperio to test our new SecondSlide digital slide sharing network.  Dr. Arias-Stella has received the great honor of being featured on a Peruvian stamp.

As part of the SecondSlide pilot test project, Dr. Arias-Stella has been refering selected cases to his colleague Dr. Juan Rosai in Milan, Italy.  The SecondSlide servers are located in Aperio's datacenter in San Diego, California.  Sharing digital slides scanned in Lima with a pathologist in Milan via servers in San Diego has been a perfect test of SecondSlide's wide-area network capabilities.

Dr. Arias-Stella is a gynecological pathologist and there is a ovarian condition he's investigated called "the Arias-Stella phenomenon" [Update: see comments from Raul Leon below].  He is also a past foreign minister of Peru (1980-83), and was also public health minister (1963-65, 1966-68) and permanent representative to the United Nations (1983-85).

Pathology can take you far!

Again, congratulations to Dr. Arias-Stella, we are proud to be working with such distinguished colleagues in the development of our network.

Should We Eliminate Pharmaceutical Funding of CME?

An interesting article on Medscape asks Should We Eliminate Pharmaceutical Funding of CME?  (PDF).  Four doctors opine in this roundtable discussion.

Robert W. Donnell, MD
It would be a mistake to end industry support of accredited CME. A ban would restrict doctors' choices. Pharmaceutical companies would divert CME funds to purely promotional materials, diminishing the overall quality of information to which doctors are exposed. Proponents of a ban have failed to sustain the burden of proof that benefits would outweigh the unintended consequences.

Pennie Marchetti, MD
It's time for us to acknowledge our susceptibility to industry influence. We may see ourselves as wise sophisticates who are too clever to be tricked by marketing ploys, but everyone else sees us as cheap fools.

Bradley P. Fox, MD
My hope is that we continue to push ourselves to practice the most cost-effective, evidence-based medicine and that we strive to make our continuing professional development just that -- professional development, not just medical education. Let everyone and anyone pay for it, but be certain to separate those who produce it from those who support it in order to keep the product clean and free of bias.

Robert M. Centor, MD
Externally funded CME can provide education, but I submit that by its nature, the topics are biased. I hope for unbiased subject selection. Therefore, I would like to ban external funding for CME.

Definitely an interesting debate.  I suspect it cannot work to ban sponsored CME; it is too expensive to produce so there has to be some sort of sponsorship.  But greater transparency in who is funding CME and what their interests are would be helpful, and would lead to less abuse.

Aperio builds ScanScope CS #300

A little Aperio blogging: Today Aperio manufacturing successfully completed (and tested) ScanScope CS number 300!

Pictured here are the Aperio manufacturing team, from L to R: Manuel Jimenez, David Rybka, Antonio Mendez, Jose Vazquez, David Sisombath, Vundith "Jimmy" Salinthone, Melissa Silva-Torcedo, Fili Guerrero.  Not picture Marc Cohn, Director of Manufacturing, who is behind the camera :)

Congratulations to our whole team for this amazing accomplishment!

Obama's big idea: Digital health records

CNNMoney reports: Obama's big idea: Digital health records:

President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.

Here's the audacious plan: Computerize all health records within five years. The quality of health care for all Americans gets a big boost, and costs decline.

Sounds good. But it won't be easy.

In fact, many hurdles stand in the way. Only about 8% of the nation's 5,000 hospitals and 17% of its 800,000 physicians currently use the kind of common computerized record-keeping systems that Obama envisions for the whole nation. And some experts say that serious concerns about patient privacy must be addressed first. Finally, the country suffers a dearth of skilled workers necessary to build and implement the necessary technology.

A key element of digital health records is digital test results, including importantly Digital Pathology.  This kind of initiative has the potential for boosting adoption of Digital Pathology.

Related, a recent article from HealthImaging reports: Healthcare could nab $100B payday in Obama stimulus package:

The $775 billion economic stimulus plan being organized by President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could pump more than $100 billion into the U.S. healthcare sector, modernizing its delivery system and providing care to those who lost health insurance along with their jobs.

Perhaps that investment would be in the area of digital health records.  There are certainly worse ways for taxpayer money to be used for stimulating an economic turnaround!

SearchMedia - a search engine for healthcare professionals

You may be interested in a new search website called SearchMedica, "a search engine for healthcare professionals".  Searches can be confined to specific disciplines, such as Cancer/Hemic, Cardiovascular, Diabetes/Endocrine, Infectious Mental/Nervous System, Musculoskeletal, Pediatric, Practice Management, Radiology, and Respiratory.  (They don't break out pathology separately - yet :)  Results can be sorted by relevance or by publication date, and you can search only "recommended medical sites" or the entire web.  All search results are filtered and curated to ensure reliability.

I haven't used it much yet but it looks like a great resource... please check it out.  (And I'd be interested to hear what you think, please leave comments if you have experiences to share.)

[ via Lab Soft News ]