Dr. Hillel Kahane MD, touched on technology that guided his digital pathology journey including AI workflows and tools for signing out prostate needle biopsies on January 2nd, Episode 5 of the Ask a Pathologist Podcast.
Dr. Kahane emphasized a particular digital pathology tool, specifically, Lumea’s BxBoard®. It has become a gamechanger for signing out prostate needle biopsies. He highlighted the many benefits of preserving tissue orientation. Further determining the exact length and areas of tumors, ensuring accurate diagnoses. Dr. Kahane also touched on the benefits of digital pathology including AI algorithms and the productivity of going digital.
Dr. Kahane stated, “If you want to be a part of the 21st century, you’ve got to go digital. There’s so much information on these slides.”
An electronic workflow allows PathNet pathologists to rapidly diagnose cases from any remote location providing results for patients promptly. Dr. Kahane explains in the episode, “I’ll annotate something on the iPad Pro and my colleague doesn’t have to waste their time looking around. Or we can just jump on a ZOOM call and look at the case together. That’s extremely valuable.”
When describing the many tools Dr. Kahane has found useful as a pathologist, he stated, “I saw a study a couple of years ago out of France, where they took a bunch of benign prostate biopsies that were a few years old and ran the algorithm on them and between nine and 12% of the cases were not benign. That’s frightening.” Dr. Kahane uses AI software algorithms which he uses as a quality assurance check. He then proceeds to see if there’s any potentially cancerous areas to examine.
Dr. Kahane stated, “I would encourage people if you have the interest. Do take the leap. Jump into it. See what it’s like and you can always go back to the microscope if you really hate it.”
Interested in practicing pathology digitally?