The founder and CEO of PathNet Inc., was featured in Season 1 Episode 8 of The Swell Podcast which was released on April 20, 2021. Dr. Matthew O. Leavitt, MD, recounts his trials, errors, and learning experiences while digitally expanding his practice and building his company into what it is today.
Leavitt and his colleague Dr. Jared Szymanski, DO, decided that the methodology of their practice needed to change. They began evaluating the inefficiencies in their system and what needed to be fixed. The end solution: redesigning the entire pathology workflow.
Pathology lab work had been completed the same way using whole slide imaging technology for two decades. Leavitt and Szymanski believe that as the world changes and technologies come about, medical practices should improve as well.
Making medical practice more accessible has long since been a desire, Leavitt said “This didn’t start 7 years ago, this started 25 years ago. But the technology that enabled it was coming to fruition around 2012. The cloud, the infrastructure, and the cost of storage and the things that precluded pathology from going digital [began] to be addressed by technological advances”.
Their big push into converting to digital practice came after Leavitt and Szymanski bought a whole slide imaging system for their lab by way of their personal savings accounts. Soon after the two realized it was a terrible investment and the equipment was more expensive than the initial purchase price, costing precious time in the lab.
Leavitt explains in the podcast “We had to ask ourselves, ‘Why did we just spend a quarter of a million dollars for an instrument that we are not even using?’ And we realized that it’s because we’re trying to just do things the way we always did them”.