The Daily Scan

microscopes fight back

 
(from the New Yorker, 3/2/09)

Beckman Coulter to Acquire Lab-Based Diagnostics Business From Olympus Corporation

Big news in diagnostic lab equipment today: Beckman Coulter to Acquire Lab-Based Diagnostics Business From Olympus Corporation:

Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NYSE: BEC), a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of products that simplify, automate, and innovate complex biomedical tests, and Olympus Corporation, a Tokyo-headquartered precision technology leader, creating innovative opto-digital solutions in healthcare, life science and consumer electronics products, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Beckman Coulter will acquire the diagnostic systems portion of Olympus' Life Sciences business for 77.45 billion yen, or approximately USD $800 million.

This acquisition will broaden Beckman Coulter's Chemistry offering, establishing a leadership position with particular strength in larger hospital laboratories. In addition, the transaction will extend our broad chemistry customer base representing a valuable new customer set for Beckman Coulter's Immunoassay products.

Olympus has a big business selling clinical chemistry instruments to the clinical pathology (CP) lab, which is adjacent to the anatomic pathology (AP) lab. Just like people are talking about radiology and pathology converging, the expectation is that CP and AP will get closer.  Interesting...  stay tuned!

Pathology Visions moves to September 13-15, 2009

 

PATHOLOGY VISIONS MOVES TO SEPTEMBER

Pathology Visions will be held September 13-15 at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina in downtown San Diego, CA. The conference offers a variety of sessions on the uses of digital pathology in research, clinical and veterinary pathology applications.

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Registration is now open. Register before April 30 and receive the early registration rate of $499. Registration includes admission to all meals, social events, sessions, posters, and the exhibit hall. Click here to register.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

New in 2009 - Scientific Posters! Poster presenters will be given a two-day display opportunity with a poster discussion session. Outstanding posters will be recognized. Abstracts are now being accepted in the following areas:

• Business Case/Reimbursements
• Clinical Pathology
• Cytology
• Disease-Specific
• Diagnostic Pathology
• Education
• Frozen Sections
• Hematopathology
• Image Analysis
• Immunohistochemistry (IHC)
• IT
• Telepathology
• Toxicologic Pathology

Deadline for priority consideration is May 15. To submit your abstract, click here.

For more information about Pathology Visions, visit www.pathologyvisions.com!

38 Exhibitors to Participate in the Upcoming Lab InfoTech Summit

Bruce Friedman notes 38 Exhibitors to Participate in the Upcoming Lab InfoTech Summit:

It's not too late to register for the Lab InfoTech Summit that will take place on March 16-18, 2009, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.This will be the 27th consecutive year for this conference with a continuing focus on clinical lab software including LIS, AP-LIS, middleware, lab portal, blood bank, decision-support, patient identification, instrument interfaces, and LIMS products. Also included will be digital pathology and in-vitro instrument displays. The conference brochure provides details about all of the lectures and workshop to be presented. On-line registration is also available.

And of course, one of the 38 is Aperio :)  See you there!

chalk tip #3: saving views of images

Did you know?  In ImageScope, you can save exact views of one or more images, and restore them later.

Open one or more images and position them the way you want, by panning and zooming each to the desired view.  Then select File | Save Image View(s)… and name a file to contain the views.  This will create a small file of type SIS (= “ScanScope Image Set”).  To restore the views later, just double-click the SIS file!  The images will be opened and their views restored to exactly the positions and zoom levels you had saved.  Even the window configuration (e.g. tiled vertical) is restored.  Try it!

NB this is great for preparing for tumor boards and digital slide conferences.

CAP Statline: Incentive for Electronic Health Records Adoption in Stimulus Bill for Independent Pathologists

From the CAP's Statline: Incentive for Electronic Health Records Adoption in Stimulus Bill for Independent Pathologists:

Both the House and Senate stimulus bills include incentives for physicians to incorporate electronic health records into their practices, but for pathologists, qualifying for the different incentive programs will depend on your practice.

Independent pathologists, as part of H.R. 1 and S. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, would be eligible for a $15,000 incentive payment for adopting electronic health records starting 2011, with a declining incentive scale each subsequent year until 2015.

This is terrific, whether you agree or not with the concept of the government's stimulus, investing in electronic health records is a terrific thing to do, improving patient care and lowering costs.  And of course a key technology required for complete EHR is digital pathology. 

chalk tip #2: fast panning field by field

Did you know?  In ImageScope, holding down the Shift key while typing arrows moves the window exactly one field.  This works even if the window is maximized (with F11), and is the fastest way to pan through a slide without missing anything.  Try it!

Digital Pathology Blog's February Case of the Month

Keith Kaplan has posted his February Case of the Month:

The Case of the Month for February is from a liver mass in a 46 year old male. The patient presented with right upper quadrant pain. No other masses or lesions were apparent on CT of the chest, abdomen and pelvis. Resection of the mass was performed. The non-neoplastic liver was non-cirrhotic and otherwise unremarkable.

If you think you have a diagnosis, please go on over to the Digital Pathology Blog and record it.

( What an excellent use of digital pathology! )

chalk tip #1: moving annotations

Did you know: In ImageScope, you can move any annotation by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging it.

Introducing Aperio chalk tips

As a new Daily Scan feature, I'm going to start posting a series of little "chalk tips" for Aperio customers on the use of Aperio's Spectrum software.

This grew out of a recent "chalk talk" meeting we had at Aperio, in which I realized that there are a lot of little cool features in our software that not everyone knows about.  Furthermore there are a lot of little things we could do that would make the software even better. 

My hope is that by posting these tips you-all will learn a few things which will help you get the most of out of our software.  And also, please feel free to comment back with suggestions for improvements.  Perhaps reading about a feature or technique will remind you about a feature or technique you'd like to have.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!