The Daily Scan

Details about the "Reverse EMR Feed" to Pathology and Lab Medicine

 

Just wanted to link Details about the "Reverse EMR Feed" to Pathology and Lab Medicine on Bruce Friedman's LabSoftNews blog, a great overview of how EMR and LIS systems communicate, and timely with the federal money queued up to fund adoption of EHR.  My own view is that it is much more likely that LIS systems and dedicated Pathology PACS systems will develop a "pathologist's cockpit", including all data from an EMR, than that EMR systems' front-ends will provide this interface.  Which will make the reverse feed of information from the EMR to the LIS (and on to the PACS) increasingly important.

chalk tip #14: Easy interface to third-party software

Did you know?  ImageScope lets you easily interface to third-party software.  This is an underappreciated capability with great utility.  It also makes for a spiffy demo :)

What does it mean to “interface” to third-party software?  In this case it means that you view a digital slide with ImageScope, select a region to be opened in third-party software, and then with two clicks the specified region is opened in the specified software.  Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the image with ImageScope.  Typically, find it in Spectrum, and click on it.  Here it is:
   

    
   

2. Select the region to be opened in third-party software.  Do this with the Extract Region tool:
   
    
   
   
    
3. You will see the Extract Image Region dialog box open.  This gives you a number of options, but there are just two things you have to decide; how big to make the image, and the image type:
   
      
   Generally limiting the image size to 2,000 pixels is best, and selecting an image type of JPG. This will give you maximum compatibility with third-party applications.
    
4. Okay, now, click Extract.  (Click #1)  The selected region will be extracted and you’ll see this:
   
   
5. Next select the third-party application you want to use from the drop down list, and click Launch.  (Click #2).  That’s it!  The selected region will be opened in the selected third-party application.

Here’s the selected region in Photoshop:

You can select a different application and click Launch again, here’s the region in Internet Explorer:

Okay, one more, here it is in Paint:

This same mechanism can be used with just about any image viewer or image analysis application.

This is cool, but how did ImageScope know about those third-party applications?  Where did the entries in that drop-down list come from?  Well, at the bottom of the list is an entry named “(Define Applications)”.  If you’ve never defined any applications, this will be the only entry in the list.  After you select this entry, a Define Applications dialog box appears, which looks like this:

 

For any third-party application to which you want to interface, just type in the Application Name, and then select the application itself on your hard drive (or if you know the name of the program file, you can just type it in).  Here are some examples:

Application Name	Program File
Photoshop	photoshp.exe
Internet Explorer	iexplore.exe
Paint	mspaint.exe
Firefox	firefox.exe

You only have to define each third-party application once; thereafter it will appear in your drop-down list and be just one click away...  try it!

GSK: change broker

Of possible interest, TheScientist has an interesting article from the Chief of R&D at GlaxoSmithKline about how they're changing their drug discovery process to move decision making from business people to scientists.

A nice example of how tough times help foster innovation and change that makes companies better.

chalk tip #13: Navigating back and forth between views

Did you know?  In ImageScope, you can easily move back and forward through every location you’ve viewed in a slide.  You might not have noticed, but on the ImageScope toolbar there are two green arrows; clicking them lets you navigate back and forth between views:

As you pan and zoom through each slide, the location and resolution of every view is recorded, so that you can page back and forth between them (just like the back and forward buttons in a web browser).  This is pretty useful, please try it!

Aperio Expands Global Digital Pathology Presence with New Subsidiary in Asia

Check this out, as MarketWatch reports Office in Tokyo Latest Milestone in Global Growth for Digital Pathology Leader.  This is pretty exciting, I can't believe our little company is so big now... can't wait to travel out there and meet our Japanese team.  There's a large market for digital pathology in Japan already, and a growing one in Asia overall.

Of course there is a lot more to doing business in Japan than building a team and opening an office (although that's a great place to start); there are also tasks like translating documentation into Japanese (e.g our IHC analysis document at right...)

IBM allots $2B to support stimulus health IT implementation

Wow, HealthImaging reports IBM allots $2B to support stimulus health IT implementation.  It is amazing how much attention and energy is being focused on EHR implementations with the ARRA funds pending!

As I talk with people about EHR systems, it amazes me how little they understand about pathology... most people seem to assume if they include pathology reports in an EHR, they have all the pathology data.  The fact that the raw data exists as physical specimens (or better, as digital slides) is hidden...