Digital Pathology Blog

Digital pathology offers significant advantages to pathology laboratories within academic institutions. In addition to clinical activities, for which digital pathology has already shown significant improvements in workflow efficiency and accuracy, such laboratories have missions of research and education, both of which can also be enhanced in the digital environment.

Case-based research projects and educational activities require the use of whole slide images (WSIs) derived from the clinical workflow. But cases flowing into these activities have specific requirements and workflows of their own.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) 2009 introduced the Health Information Technology for Economical and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act with the aim to incentivize “meaningful” implementation and usage of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) throughout the nation. Under HITECH, two incentive programs for Medicare and Medicaid were introduced which allow eligible professionals (EPs) to claim thousands of dollars in incentives over several years, if they could meet the requirements set out for different stages of Meaningful Use.