No Night Shift Pathology services for Physical Biopsy Analysis – Urgent Need for Digital Biopsies, page-5

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maybe Sonic healthcare are taking a look?​

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"Artificial intelligence will disrupt all industries. Don't be left behind."​

Dave Waters​

My friends,​

A recent article in the financial newspaper reported that Sonic Healthcare, a pathology provider giant, has invested an unspecified sum, to team up with a software company, to develop digitisation and artificial intelligence (AI), to assist histopathologists to and improve and speed up diagnostic histopathology of cancer. The reasons Sonic gives is that digitalisation of pathology has been lagging digitisation in other areas such as medical imaging. They also indicate is that there is already a huge shortage of histopathologist, and the need is twice that being trained in Australia. Tiresias however also knows that is an underestimate, but also knows that Sonic has realised that it is lagging overseas developments.​

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This is of course very interesting to Tiresias, who has posted previously on the natural application of AI to Optiscan’s Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy, which is already digitised, at the moment of capture, and can give real-time digital micro-video, much better suited for artificial intelligence. What Sonic is doing, and please don’t think that Tiresias thinks it’s not worthwhile, is applying AI to ancient technology. It is definitely necessary, and not really just watering of last year’s crops. However, Tiresias’s friends will know that current histopathology is of ex-vivo, post-mortem, examination of tissues which has been excised either as a biopsy or surgical removal, prepared by a long process of preservation, staining, micro-toming, then examination. The digitisation and AI assistance comes at the end of this very complex, very time consuming, and expensive process, which gives information too late to be of any assistance to the surgeon in the operating theatre and too late for the clinician in the clinic examining the patient.​

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Somebody should tell Sonic Healthcare about Optiscan, that Optiscan’s real-time, in-vivo digital CLE, though not a total replacement for some traditional histopathology, can eliminate frozen section biopsy, expand histopathology into the operating room and clinic, and can shortcut much else. Sonic should know AI, with Optiscan’s CLE, would be far more transformational in antemortem in-vivo real-time histopathological diagnosis. This is where the real histopathological future is, Sonic Healthcare. Tiresias however, is not surprised by all this. Tiresias reminds his friends about Kodak, once again. Why did Kodak stick to photographic film, even when they had worked on and developed a digital camera? Of course, Tiresias is still very pleased that AI is coming into histopathology in Australia, and Tiresias is sure this would not have escaped Optiscan’s management.​

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