Background: The need for informatics and genomics training in pathology is critical, yet limited resources for such training are available. In this study we sought to critically test the hypothesis that the incorporation of a wiki (a collaborative writing and publication tool with roots in "Web 2.0") in a combined informatics and genomics course could both (1) serve as an interactive, collaborative educational resource and reference and (2) actively engage trainees by requiring the creation and sharing of educational materials. Materials and Methods: A 2-week full-time course at our institution covering genomics, research, and pathology informatics (GRIP) was taught by 36 faculty to 18 second- and third-year pathology residents. The course content included didactic lectures and hands-on demonstrations of technology (e.g., whole-slide scanning, telepathology, and statistics software). Attendees were given pre- and posttests. Residents were trained to use wiki technology (MediaWiki) and requested to construct a wiki about the GRIP course by writing comprehensive online review articles on assigned lectures. To gauge effectiveness, pretest and posttest scores for our course were compared with scores from the previous 7 years from the predecessor course (limited to informatics) given at our institution that did not utilize wikis. Results: Residents constructed 59 peer-reviewed collaborative wiki articles. This group showed a 25% improvement (standard deviation 12%) in test scores, which was greater than the 16% delta recorded in the prior 7 years of our predecessor course (P = 0.006). Conclusions: Our use of wiki technology provided a wiki containing high-quality content that will form the basis of future pathology informatics and genomics courses and proved to be an effective teaching tool, as evidenced by the significant rise in our resident posttest scores. Data from this project provide support for the notion that active participation in content creation is an effective mechanism for mastery of content. Future residents taking this course will continue to build on this wiki, keeping content current, and thereby benefit from this collaborative teaching tool.

Background: In 2007, our healthcare system established a clinical fellowship program in Pathology Informatics. In 2010 a core didactic course was implemented to supplement the fellowship research and operational rotations. In 2011, the course was enhanced by a formal, structured core curriculum and reading list. We present and discuss our rationale and development process for the Core Curriculum and the role it plays in our Pathology Informatics Fellowship Training Program. Materials and Methods: The Core Curriculum for Pathology Informatics was developed, and is maintained, through the combined efforts of our Pathology Informatics Fellows and Faculty. The curriculum was created with a three-tiered structure, consisting of divisions, topics, and subtopics. Primary (required) and suggested readings were selected for each subtopic in the curriculum and incorporated into a curated reading list, which is reviewed and maintained on a regular basis. Results: Our Core Curriculum is composed of four major divisions, 22 topics, and 92 subtopics that cover the wide breadth of Pathology Informatics. The four major divisions include: (1) Information Fundamentals, (2) Information Systems, (3) Workflow and Process, and (4) Governance and Management. A detailed, comprehensive reading list for the curriculum is presented in the Appendix to the manuscript and contains 570 total readings (current as of March 2012). Discussion: The adoption of a formal, core curriculum in a Pathology Informatics fellowship has significant impacts on both fellowship training and the general field of Pathology Informatics itself. For a fellowship, a core curriculum defines a basic, common scope of knowledge that the fellowship expects all of its graduates will know, while at the same time enhancing and broadening the traditional fellowship experience of research and operational rotations. For the field of Pathology Informatics itself, a core curriculum defines to the outside world, including departments, companies, and health systems considering hiring a pathology informatician, the core knowledge set expected of a person trained in the field and, more fundamentally, it helps to define the scope of the field within Pathology and healthcare in general.

Background: Pathology Informatics is a new field; a field that is still defining itself even as it begins the formalization, accreditation, and board certification process. At the same time, Pathology itself is changing in a variety of ways that impact informatics, including subspecialization and an increased use of data analysis. In this paper, we examine how these changes impact both the structure of Pathology Informatics fellowship programs and the fellows' goals within those programs. Materials and Methods: As part of our regular program review process, the fellows evaluated the value and effectiveness of our existing fellowship tracks (Research Informatics, Clinical Two-year Focused Informatics, Clinical One-year Focused Informatics, and Clinical 1 + 1 Subspecialty Pathology and Informatics). They compared their education, informatics background, and anticipated career paths and analyzed them for correlations between those parameters and the fellowship track chosen. All current and past fellows of the program were actively involved with the project. Results: Fellows' anticipated career paths correlated very well with the specific tracks in the program. A small set of fellows (Clinical - one or two year - Focused Informatics tracks) anticipated clinical careers primarily focused in informatics (Director of Informatics). The majority of the fellows, however, anticipated a career practicing in a Pathology subspecialty, using their informatics training to enhance that practice (Clinical 1 + 1 Subspecialty Pathology and Informatics Track). Significantly, all fellows on this track reported they would not have considered a Clinical Two-year Focused Informatics track if it was the only track offered. The Research and the Clinical One-year Focused Informatics tracks each displayed unique value for different situations. Conclusions: It seems a "one size fits all" fellowship structure does not fit the needs of the majority of potential Pathology Informatics candidates. Increasingly, these fellowships must be able to accommodate the needs of candidates anticipating a wide range of Pathology Informatics career paths, be able to accommodate Pathology's increasingly subspecialized structure, and do this in a way that respects the multiple fellowships needed to become a subspecialty pathologist and informatician. This is further complicated as Pathology Informatics begins to look outward and takes its place in the growing, and still ill-defined, field of Clinical Informatics, a field that is not confined to just one medical specialty, to one way of practicing medicine, or to one way of providing patient care.

Context and Aims: Rapid, accurate peripheral blood differentials are essential to maintain standards of patient care. CellaVision DM96 (CellaVision AB, Lund, Sweden) (CV) is an automated digital morphology and informatics system used to locate, pre-classify, store and transmit images of platelets, red and white blood cells to a trained technologist who confirms or edits CV cell classification. We assessed our experience with CV by evaluating sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value for CV in three different patient populations. Materials and Methods: We analyzed classification accuracy of CV for white blood cells, erythroblasts, platelets and artefacts over six months for three different university hospitals using CV. Results: CV classified 211,218 events for the adult cancer center; 51,699 events for the adult general hospital; and 8,009 events for the children's hospital with accuracy of CV being 93%, 87.3% and 95.4% respectively. Sensitivity and positive predictive value were <80% for immature granulocytes (band neutrophil, promyelocyte, myelocyte and metamyelocytes) (differences usually within one stage of maturation). Cell types comprising a lower frequency of the total events, including blasts, showed lower accuracy at some sites. Conclusions: The reduced immature granulocyte classification accuracy may be due in part to the subjectivity in classification of these cells, length of experience with the system and individual expertise of the technologist. Cells with low sensitivity and positive predictive value comprised a minority of the cells and should not significantly affect the technologist re-classification time. CV serves as a clinically useful instrument in performance of peripheral blood differentials.

Context: Skype is a peer to peer software application that has been historically used for voice and video calls, instant messaging, and file transfer over the Internet. Few studies are available using Skype specifically for telepathology. Aims: Our aim is to show that dynamic nonrobotic teleconsultation is possible and even effective via means of a standard microscope camera capable of live acquisition, Skype, an established broad band internet connection, and experienced pathologists. Settings and Design: Both the consulting "sending" pathologist and consultant "receiving" pathologist are reasonably experienced general surgical pathologists at junior attending level with several years of experience in sign out. Forty-five cases were chosen encompassing a broad range of surgical pathology specimens. The cases were prospectively evaluated with the consultant diagnosis used as a preliminary pathologic impression with the final diagnosis being confirmation. Materials and Methods: Versions of Skype 5.0 and above were used along with established broadband internet connections, usually between academic medical institutions. Results: Forty of forty-five cases (89%) were essentially concordant. In four of forty-five cases (9%), the consulting impression gave a differential, but favored an entity which did not match the final diagnosis. Only one case (2%) did the consulting impression not match the final diagnosis; a discordant opinion. Conclusions: The image quality via Skype screen sharing option is excellent. Essentially no lag time was seen. We have shown in our small pilot study that Skype is an effective cost-efficient means for teleconsultation, particularly in the setting of entity-related differential diagnoses in surgical pathology and when both the consulting and consultant pathologists are reasonably experienced.

Background: Whole slide digital imaging (WSDI) offers an alternative to glass slides for diagnostic interpretation. While prior work has concentrated on the use of whole slide digital imaging for routine diagnostic cases, this study focuses on diagnostic interpretation of digital images for a highly challenging area, upper gastro-intestinal (GI) dysplasia. The aim of this study is to study the accuracy and efficiency of WSDI in the diagnosis of upper GI tract dysplasia. Materials and Methods: Forty-two hematoxylin and eosin (H and E)-stained slides representing negative, indefinite, low grade and high grade dysplasia were selected and scanned at 20x (Aperio XT). Four attending GI pathologists reviewed the WSDI, then glass slides, with at least 3-4 weeks between each media; glass slides were re-reviewed 16-18 months later. Results: Intraobserver variability for three clinically relevant categories (negative, indefinite/low grade, high grade) was wider for WSDI to glass (kappa range 0.36-0.78) than glass to glass (kappa range 0.58-0.75). In comparison to glass slide review, WSDI review required more time and was associated with an unexpected trend toward downgrading dysplasia. Conclusions: Our results suggest: (1) upper GI dysplasia can be diagnosed using WSDI with similar intraobserver reproducibility as for glass slides; however, this is not true for all pathologists; (2) pathologists may have a tendency to downgrade dysplasia in digital images; and (3) pathologists who use WSDI for interpretation of GI dysplasia cases may benefit from regular, on-going, re-review of paired digital and glass images to ensure the most accurate utilization of digital technology, at least in the early stages of implementation.

Background: Graphical reports that contain charts, images, and tables have potential to convey information more effectively than text-based reports; however, studies have not measured how much clinicians value such features. We sought to identify factors that might influence the utilization of reports with graphical elements postulating that this is a surrogate for relative clinical utility of these graphical elements. Materials and Methods: We implemented a pilot project at ARUP laboratories to develop online enhanced laboratory test reports that contained graphical elements. We monitored on-demand clinician access to reports generated for 48 reportable tests over 22 months. We evaluated utilization of reports with graphical elements by clinicians at all institutions that use ARUP as a reference laboratory using descriptive statistics, regression, and meta-analysis tools to evaluate groups of similar test reports. Results: Median download rate by test was 8.6% with high heterogeneity in download rates between tests. Test reports with additional graphical elements were not necessarily downloaded more often than reports without these elements. Recently implemented tests and tests reporting abnormal results were associated with higher download rates (P < 0.01). Higher volume tests were associated with lower download rates (P = 0.03). Conclusions: In select cases graphical information may be clinically useful, particularly for less frequently ordered tests and in on reports of abnormal results. The utilization data presented could be used as a reference point for other laboratories planning on implementing graphical reporting. However, between-test heterogeneity was high and in many cases graphical elements may add little clinical utility, particularly if these merely reinforce information already contained in text based reports.