Healthcare innovators agree that the integration of diagnostics and imaging information, combined with a healthcare information technology (IT) platform, can dramatically improve the way patients are treated. With the computerization of imaging and laboratory diagnostics, stunning new medical insights and data are emerging.
According to Jared Schwartz, MD, PhD, Pathology and Lab Medicine at Presbyterian Healthcare in Charlotte, North Carolina, molecular diagnostics integrated with therapeutics represents a major new opportunity in the era of personalized medicine. “To leverage this opportunity,” he says, “the information from pathology and radiology sources needs to be combined into a single, comprehensible, understandable, and actionable report.”

Jonathan Braun, MS, PhD, Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, California, provided a case study on a unique cancer center he initiated that brings together the university’s radiology and pathology departments. Additional topics covered at the Summit included streamlining workflow within the framework of integration and the benefits of digitizing glass pathology slides.

“The practice of medicine is holistic,” says Ossama W. Tawfik, MD, PhD, Director of Anatomic and Surgical Pathology and Vice Chairman of the Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. “It’s not just pathology, and it’s not just radiology. There will be integration, and that could include a new kind of workflow.” Even though the challenges are there, there is also a very strong desire to pursue the goal of close collaboration between pathologists and radiologists in a digital environment. “The momentum is strong right now, and we have to find a way to lead the pack,” states Tawfik. “The breakthroughs in technology have the potential to bring the two practices together.”