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Rise in Cancer Rates among Young People Contributes to New Phenomenon of ‘Turbo Cancers’ as a Cause for Concern

Clinical laboratories and pathologists should expect to receive increase referrals from oncologists with younger patients

More people are getting serious cases of cancer at younger and younger ages. So much so that some anatomic pathologists and epidemiologists are using the term “Turbo Cancers” to describe “the recent emergence of aggressive cancers that grow very quickly,” Vigilant News reported. 

Cancer continues to be the second leading cause of death in the United States and current trends of the disease appearing in younger populations are causing alarm among medical professionals and scientists.

“Because these cancers have been occurring in people who are too young to get them, basically, compared to the normal way it works, they’ve been designated as turbo cancers,” Harvey Risch, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, in an interview with Epoch TV’s American Thought Leaders.

It’s anatomic pathologists who receive the biopsies and analyze them to diagnose the cancer. Thus, they are on the front lines of seeing an increased number of biopsies for younger patients showing up with the types of cancers that normally take many years to grow large enough to be discovered by imaging and lumps leading to biopsy and diagnosis. It’s a medical mystery that may have long term effects on younger populations.

Harvey Risch, MD, PhD

“What clinicians have been seeing is very strange things,” said Harvey Risch, MD, PhD (above), Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, in an Epoch TV interview. “For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don’t have family histories of the disease—that’s basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they’re seeing in very young people.” Epidemiologists and anatomic pathologists are describing these conditions as “turbo cancers.” (Photo copyright: Yale University.)

Early-Onset Cancer Rates Jump Sharply

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 3.3 million Americans died in 2022, and 607,800 of those deaths were attributed to cancer. This statistic translates to approximately 18.4% of US deaths being due to cancer last year. 

An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled, “Patterns in Cancer Incidence among People Younger than 50 Years in the US, 2010 to 2019,” states that the rates of cancer in people under the age of 50 has risen sharply in recent years. The study found that “the incidence rates of early-onset cancer increased from 2010 to 2019. Although breast cancer had the highest number of incident cases, gastrointestinal cancers had the fastest-growing incidence rates among all early-onset cancers.”

The largest increase in cancer diagnoses occurred in people in the 30 to 39-year-old age group. This number represents a jump of almost 20% for the years analyzed for individuals in that demographic. The researchers also found that cancer rates decreased in individuals over the age of 50.

“We are already seeing younger patients,” John Ricci, MD, Chief of Colorectal Surgery at Long Island Jewish Medical Center told US News and World Report. “We used to say 40s was extremely abnormal, but we’re definitely seeing more [cases] in the 30s than we had before.”

Breast cancer, which increased by about 8% in younger people, accounted for the most diagnoses in this age group. However, the biggest increase was 15% for gastrointestinal cancers, including colon, appendix, bile duct, and pancreatic cancer. 

Because cancer can recur or progress, researchers have concerns about what happens to young cancer patients as they grow older and what effect cancer may have on their lives.

“They are at a transitional stage in life,” Chun Chao, PhD, Research Scientist, Division of Epidemiologic Research at Kaiser Permanente, told The Hill. “If you think about it, this is the age when people are trying to establish their independence. Some people are finishing up their education. People are trying to get their first job, just start to establish their career. And people are starting new families and starting to have kids. So, at this particular age, having a cancer diagnosis can be a huge disruption to these goals.”

Sadly, young cancer survivors have a heightened risk of developing a second cancer and a variety of other health conditions, such as cardiovascular diseases and metabolic disorders.

Lifestyle a Factor in Increased Risk for Cancer

“The increase in early-onset cancers is likely associated with the increasing incidence of obesity as well as changes in environmental exposures, such as smoke and gasoline, sleep patterns, physical activity, microbiota, and transient exposure to carcinogenic compounds,” according to the JAMA study.

“Suspected risk factors may involve increasing obesity among children and young adults; also the drastic change in our diet, like increasing consumption of sugar, sweetened beverages, and high fat,” Hyuna Sung, PhD, Cancer Surveillance Researcher at the American Cancer Society, told US News and World Report. “The increase in cancers among young adults has significant implications. It is something we need to consider as a bellwether for future trends.”

“Increased efforts are required to combat the risk factors for early-onset cancer, such as obesity, heavy alcohol consumption, and smoking,” said Daniel Huang, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, one of the authors of the study, in the US News and World Report interview.

Other studies also have shown a rise in so-called turbo cancers.

“Cancer as a disease takes a long time to manifest itself from when it starts. From the first cells that go haywire until they grow to be large enough to be diagnosed, or to be symptomatic, can take anywhere from two or three years for the blood cancers—like leukemias and lymphomas—to five years for lung cancer, to 20 years for bladder cancer, or 30 to 35 years for colon cancer, and so on,” Risch told the Epoch Times.

Not the Occurrence Oncologists Expect

“Some of these cancers are so aggressive that between the time that they’re first seen and when they come back for treatment after a few weeks, they’ve grown dramatically compared to what oncologists would have expected,” Risch continued. “This is just not the normal occurrence of how cancer works.”

Risch believes that damage to the immune system is the most likely cause of the rise in turbo cancers. He said the immune system usually recognizes, manages, and disables cancer cells so they cannot progress. However, when the immune system is impaired, cancer cells can multiply to the point where the immune system cannot cope with the number of bad cells.

It is a statistical fact that more people are being diagnosed with serious cases of cancer at younger and younger ages. If this trend continues, clinical laboratories and pathologists can expect to see more oncology case referrals and perform more cancer diagnostic tests for younger patients. 

JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Cancer Cases Are Rising among Younger Americans: ‘Alarming’ Trend

Patterns in Cancer Incidence among People Younger than 50 Years in the US, 2010 to 2019

A Common Cancer at an Uncommon Age

Top Doctor Explains Why “Turbo Cancer” Rates Are Likely to Get Even Worse

Cancer Rates Are Climbing Among Young People. It’s Not Clear Why.

Provisional Mortality Data—United States, 2022

Cancers, Especially Gastro Tumors, Are Rising Among Americans under 50

Researchers Find AI Improves Breast Cancer Detection by 20%

Initial analyses also shows AI screening lowers associated radiologist image reading workload by half

Both radiologists and pathologists analyze images to make cancer diagnoses, although one works with radiological images and the other works with tissue biopsies as the source of information. Now, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) for cancer screenings means both radiologists and pathologists may soon be able to detect cancer more accurately and in significantly less time.

Pathologists may find it instructive to learn more about how use of this technology shortened the time for the radiologist to sign out the case without compromising accuracy and quality.

Led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden, the Mammography Screening with Artificial Intelligence (MASAI) trial found that using AI during high-risk breast cancer screenings improved breast cancer detection by 20% without affecting the number of false positives, according to a Lund University news release.

Even better, AI screenings reduced doctors’ workload in interpreting mammography  images by nearly 50%, the news release states. Such an improvement would also be a boon to busy pathology practices were this technology to become available for tissue biopsy screenings as well. 

The researchers published their findings in the journal The Lancet Oncology titled, “Artificial Intelligence-Supported Screen Reading versus Standard Double Reading in the Mammography Screening with Artificial Intelligence Trial (MASAI): a Clinical Safety Analysis of a Randomized, Controlled, Non-Inferiority, Single-Blinded Screening Accuracy Study.“

“The greatest potential of AI right now is that it could allow radiologists to be less burdened by the excessive amount of reading,” said breast radiologist Kristina Lång, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in Diagnostic Radiology at Lund University. Pathologists working with clinical laboratories in cancer diagnosis could benefit from similar AI advancements. (Photo copyright: Lund University.)

Can AI Save Time and Improve Diagnoses?

One motivation for conducting this study is that Sweden, like other nations, has a shortage of radiologists. Given ongoing advances in machine learning and AI, researchers launched the study to assess the accuracy of AI in diagnosing images, as well as its ability to make radiologists more productive.

The MASAI trial was the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of AI-supported screening, the Lund news release noted.

“We found that using AI results in the detection of 20% (41) more cancers compared with standard screening, without affecting false positives. A false positive in screening occurs when a woman is recalled but cleared of suspicion of cancer after workup,” said breast radiologist Kristina Lång, MD, PhD, clinical researcher and associate professor in diagnostic radiology at Lund University, and consultant at Skåne University Hospital, in the news release.  

Not only did the researchers explore the accuracy of AI-supported mammography compared with radiologists’ standard screen reading, they also looked into AI’s effect on radiologists’ screen-reading workload, the Lancet paper states.

Impetus for the research was the shortage of radiologists in Sweden and other countries. A Lancet news release noted that “there is a shortage of breast radiologists in many countries, including a shortfall of around 41 (8%) in the UK in 2020 and about 50 in Sweden, and it takes over a decade to train a radiologist capable of interpreting mammograms.”

That makes it even more challenging for providers to meet European Commission Initiatives on Breast and Colorectal Cancer (ECIBC) recommendations that two radiologists screen a woman’s mammogram, the Lancet news release pointed out.

More Breast Cancer Identified with Lower Radiologist Workload When Using AI Screening

Here are study findings, according to the Lancet paper:

  • AI-supported screening resulted in 244 cancers of 861 women recalled.
  • Standard screening found 203 screen-detected cancers among 817 women who were recalled.
  • The false positive rate of 1.5% was the same in both groups.
  • 41 (20%) more cancers were detected in the AI-enabled screening group.
  • Screen readings by radiologists in the AI-supported group totaled 46,345, as compared to 83,231 in the standard screening group.
  • Workload dropped by 44% for physicians using screen-reading with AI.

“We need to see whether these promising results hold up under other conditions—with other radiologists or other algorithms,” Lang said in the Lund news release.

“The results from our first analysis show that AI-supported screening is safe since the cancer detection rate did not decline despite a reduction in the screen-reading workload,” she added.

Is AI a Threat to Radiologists?

The use of AI in the Swedish study is an early indication that the technology is advancing in ways that may contribute to increased diagnostic accuracy for radiologists. But could AI replace human radiologists’ readings. Not anytime soon.

“These promising interim safety results should be used to inform new trials and program-based evaluations to address the pronounced radiologist shortage in many countries. But they are not enough on their own to confirm that AI is ready to be implemented in mammography screening,” Lång cautioned. “We still need to understand the implications on patients’ outcomes, especially whether combining radiologists’ expertise with AI can help detect interval cancers that are often missed by traditional screening, as well as the cost-effectiveness of the technology.”

In an Advisory Board daily briefing, breast radiologist Laura Heacock, MD, of the NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center said, “If you spend a day with a radiologist, you’ll see that how an AI looks at screening a mammogram is really just a fraction of how radiologists practice medicine, even in breast imaging.

“These tools work best when paired with highly trained radiologists who make the final call on your mammogram. Think of it as a tool like a stethoscope for a cardiologist,” she added.

Whether a simple tool or an industry-changing breakthrough, pathology groups and clinical laboratories that work with oncologists can safely assume that AI advances will lead to more cancer research and diagnostic tools that enable earlier and more accurate diagnoses from tissue biopsies and better guidance on therapies for patients.   

—Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

How AI Improved Breast Cancer Detection by 20%

Artificial Intelligence-Supported Screen Reading versus Standard Double Reading in the Mammography Screening with Artificial Intelligence Trial (MASAI): a Clinical Safety Analysis of a Randomized, Controlled, Non-Inferiority, Single-Blinded Screening Accuracy Study

AI Can Detect Breast Cancer as Well as Radiologists, Study Finds

AI-Supported Mammography Screening is Found to be Safe

European Breast Cancer Guidelines

AI Use in Breast Cancer Screening as Good as Two Radiologists, Study Finds

Study Finds Smartphones Can Be as Accurate as Pulse Oximeters at Reading Blood-Oxygen Saturation

Technology could enable patients to monitor their own oxygen levels and transmit that data to healthcare providers, including clinical laboratories

Clinical laboratories may soon have a new data point to add to their laboratory information system (LIS) for doctors to review. Researchers have determined that smartphones can read blood-oxygen levels as accurately as purpose-built pulse oximeters.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Washington (UW) and University of California San Diego (UC San Diego), the proof-of-concept study found that an unmodified smartphone camera and flash along with an app is “capable of detecting blood oxygen saturation levels down to 70%. This is the lowest value that pulse oximeters should be able to measure, as recommended by the US Food and Drug Administration,” according to Digital Health News.

This could mean that patients at risk of hypoxemia, or who are suffering a respiratory illness such as COVID-19, could eventually add accurate blood-oxygen saturation (SpO2) readings to their lab test results at any time and from any location.

The researchers published their findings in the journal NPJ Digital Medicine titled, “Smartphone Camera Oximetry in an Induced Hypoxemia Study.”

“In an ideal world, this information could be seamlessly transmitted to a doctor’s office. This would be really beneficial for telemedicine appointments or for triage nurses to be able to quickly determine whether patients need to go to the emergency department or if they can continue to rest at home and make an appointment with their primary care provider later,” Matthew Thompson, DPhil, Professor of Global Health and Family Medicine at University of Washington, told Digital Health News. Clinical laboratories may soon have a new data point for their laboratory information systems. (Photo copyright. University of Washington.)

UW/UC San Diego Study Details

The researchers studied three men and three women, ages 20-34. All were Caucasian except for one African American, Digital Health News reported. To conduct the study, a standard pulse oximeter was placed on a finger and, on the same hand, another of the participant’s fingers was placed over a smartphone camera.

“We performed the first clinical development validation on a smartphone camera-based SpO2 sensing system using a varied fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) protocol, creating a clinically relevant validation dataset for solely smartphone-based contact PPG [photoplethysmography] methods on a wider range of SpO2 values (70–100%) than prior studies (85–100%). We built a deep learning model using this data to demonstrate an overall MAE [Mean Absolute Error] = 5.00% SpO2 while identifying positive cases of low SpO2 < 90% with 81% sensitivity and 79% specificity,” the researchers wrote in NPJ Digital Medicine.

When the smartphone camera’s flash passes light through the finger, “a deep-learning algorithm deciphers the blood oxygen levels.” Participants were also breathing in “a controlled mixture of oxygen and nitrogen to slowly reduce oxygen levels,” Digital Health News reported.

“The camera is recording a video: Every time your heart beats, fresh blood flows through the part illuminated by the flash,” Edward Wang, PhD, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego and senior author of the project, told Digital Health News. Wang started this project as a UW doctoral student studying electrical and computer engineering and now directs the UC San Diego DigiHealth Lab.

“The camera records how much that blood absorbs the light from the flash in each of the three color channels it measures: red, green, and blue. Then we can feed those intensity measurements into our deep-learning model,” he added.

The deep learning algorithm “pulled out the blood oxygen levels. The remainder of the data was used to validate the method and then test it to see how well it performed on new subjects,” Digital Health News reported.

“Smartphone light can get scattered by all these other components in your finger, which means there’s a lot of noise in the data that we’re looking at,” Varun Viswanath, co-lead author in the study, told Digital Health News. Viswanath is a UW alumnus who is now a doctoral student being advised by Wang at UC San Diego.

“Deep learning is a really helpful technique here because it can see these really complex and nuanced features and helps you find patterns that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see,” he added.

Each round of testing took approximately 15 minutes. In total the researchers gathered more than 10,000 blood oxygen readings. Levels ranged from 61% to 100%.

“The smartphone correctly predicted whether the subject had low blood oxygen levels 80% of the time,” Digital Health News reported.

Smartphones Accurately Collecting Data

The UW/UC San Diego study is the first to show such precise results using a smartphone.

“Other smartphone apps that do this were developed by asking people to hold their breath. But people get very uncomfortable and have to breathe after a minute or so, and that’s before their blood-oxygen levels have gone down far enough to represent the full range of clinically relevant data,” said Jason Hoffman, a PhD student researcher at UW’s UbiComp Lab and co-lead author of the study.

The ability to track a full 15 minutes of data is a prime example of improvement. “Our data shows that smartphones could work well right in the critical threshold range,” Hoffman added.

“Smartphone-based SpO2 monitors, especially those that rely only on built-in hardware with no modifications, present an opportunity to detect and monitor respiratory conditions in contexts where pulse oximeters are less available,” the researchers wrote.

“This way you could have multiple measurements with your own device at either no cost or low cost,” Matthew Thompson, DPhil, Professor of Global Health and Family Medicine at University of Washington, told Digital Health News. Thompson is a professor of both family medicine and global health and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine.

What Comes Next

The UW/UC San Diego research team plans to continue its research and gather more diversity among subjects.

“It’s so important to do a study like this,” Wang said. “Traditional medical devices go through rigorous testing. But computer science research is still just starting to dig its teeth into using machine learning for biomedical device development and we’re all still learning. By forcing ourselves to be rigorous, we’re forcing ourselves to learn how to do things right.”

Though no current clinical laboratory application is pending, smartphone use to capture biometrics for testing is increasing. Soon, labs may need a way to input all that data into their laboratory information systems. It’s something to consider.

—Kristin Althea O’Connor

Related Information:

A Smartphone’s Camera and Flash could Help People Measure Blood Oxygen Levels at Home

Smartphones Can Measure Blood Oxygen Levels at Home

Smartphone’s Camera, Flash, Can Measure Blood Oxygen Up to 70% at Home

Smartphone Camera Oximetry in an Induced Hypoxemia Study

UCSB Researchers Discover Superior Culture Medium for Bacterial Testing, along with New Insights into Antimicrobial Resistance

Study may also result in new clinical laboratory tools for determining antimicrobial resistance and efficacy of existing antibiotics

Researchers find it increasingly difficult to develop antibiotics that are effective against strains of bacteria that display antibiotic resistance—a subset of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). However, a new study provides a glimmer of hope and may spur clinical laboratories to look at this research in novel ways.

Conducted at the University of California Santa Barbara, the study looked at more than 500 antibiotic-bacteria combinations. The researchers discovered that several widely used, FDA-approved, antibiotics may be more useful than previously thought against a large range of bacterial infections, said infectious disease specialist Judy Stone, MD, in an article she penned for Forbes titled, “Why Antibiotics Fail—and How We Can Do Better.”

The researchers also discovered a common culture medium that enables a better assessment of the properties of various strains of bacteria to resist different antibiotics.

Clinical laboratories and microbiologists are tasked with plating and growing bugs to identify a specific bug, what strain of bug, and whether that strain has resistance to specific antibiotics. Thus, this research touches on what they do daily. It is something that may provide microbiologists with new approaches to detect AMR more accurately.

“We know there are a variety of reasons why antibiotics don’t work as predicted, from wrongly prescribed doses to infrequent administration, but another less noticeable reason is that lab testing can show a bacteria is susceptible to antibiotics when it’s actually not. You know, the whole in vitro (culture plate) versus in vivo (life) balance,” wrote Judy Stone, MD, infectious disease expert, in her Forbes article. Clinical laboratories may soon have a better way of identifying antibiotic resistance in deadly bacteria. (Photo: LinkedIn profile.)

UCSB Antimicrobial Study Details

Antibiotic-resistant infections are responsible for more than 32,000 deaths in the US and 1.27 million globally every year, Forbes reported. A study like this can have a far-reaching impact.

To conduct their study, Michael Mahan, PhD, Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at UCSB, and his team at the Mahan Lab on the UCSB campus, used Fisher Scientific’s Gibco Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM), a basal medium for supporting the growth of many different mammalian cells.

The DMEM predicted antibiotic effectiveness better than Mueller Hinton Broth (MHB), another growth medium from Thermo Fisher Scientific that has been used in clinical laboratories by World Health Organization (WHO) decree since 1968, Forbes reported.

Assays were run against 13 isolates from nine species of bacteria to determine the efficacy of 15 different antibiotics. Using DMEM, the team found different sensitivities in 15% of the bacterial isolates tested in vitro compared to MHB.

In Mahan’s follow-up tests, which looked at mice infected with different bacteria, MHB was accurate in 54% of test predictions while DMEM was accurate 77% of the time. Part of the reason, Mahan believes, is because DMEM is more physiologic and closer in conditions to people (in vivo), Forbes reported.

“People are not Petri plates—that is why antibiotics fail. Testing under conditions that mimic the body improves the accuracy by which lab tests predict drug potency,” said Mahan in a UCSB press release.

The Mahan Lab researchers published their findings in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, titled, “Re-evaluation of FDA-Approved Antibiotics with Increased Diagnostic Accuracy for Assessment of Antimicrobial Resistance.”

Results Look Promising

“I think it has merit. I think this study has been very well-designed … and showed that this makes clinical sense … If it bears out in humans, it will be clinically very significant,” pulmonologist Ken Yomer Yoneda, MD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Internal Medicine at UC Davis Health, told Forbes.

Though the major limitation of the study is that it was conducted on mice and not humans, Yoneda said it gives an indication of potential success with humans. “If it bears out in humans it will be clinically very significant,” he told Stone for her Forbes article.

Rodney Rohde, PhD, Professor and Chair of Clinical Lab Science Program at Texas State University also shared enthusiasm on the findings. According to Stone, “[Rohde] was ‘intrigued’ by the finding that using a physiologic media predicted ‘a change in susceptibility’ thresholds used to categorize patient isolates as susceptible or resistant.

“He was also ‘excited about the results of increasing diagnostic accuracy’ with especially difficult-to-treat organisms,” she noted.

“Rohde added that the issue of these clinical breakpoints—setting the level at which an organism is defined as ‘sensitive’ or ‘resistant’ to an antibiotic is a hot topic, undergoing considerable discussion in lab circles. Multiple agencies need to reach agreement for the standards that are used globally, both in the US and Europe,” Stone wrote.

Old Drug, New Tricks

According to the UCSB press release, “Physicians are aware of the flaws in the gold-standard test [MHB]. When recommended antibiotics do not work, they must rely on their experience to decide on the appropriate antibiotic(s) for their patients. This study provides a potential solution to address the disparity between antibiotics indicated by standard testing and actual patient outcomes.” 

Infectious disease physician Lynn Fitzgibbons, MD, remarked in the UCSB press release, “Re-evaluation of FDA-approved antibiotics may be of far greater benefit than the time and cost of developing new drugs to combat antimicrobial resistance, potentially leading to significant life-savings and cost-savings.”

In her Forbes article, Stone wrote, “Pharmaceutical companies are abandoning the acute infectious disease market and few new antibiotics are in sight. Pharma is profit driven and antibiotics are simply not as lucrative as life-style drugs (like Viagra/Cialis or Rogaine for hair loss) or those for chronic diseases. So, Mahan et al.’s findings are welcome news indeed.”

Once further studies validate the UCSB study findings and allow their use in clinical settings for patient care, clinical laboratories and microbiologists may have new tools for accurately determining a bacterium’s ability to resist existing antibiotics or its susceptibility to antibiotics not currently used to treat certain infections.

—Kristin Althea O’Connor

Related Information:

Why Antibiotics Fail and How We Can Do Better

Re-evaluation of FDA-Approved Antibiotics with Increased Diagnostic Accuracy for Assessment of Antimicrobial Resistance

New Test Reveals Existing Antibiotics, Hiding in Plain Sight on Pharmacy Shelves, Can Cure Superbugs

Samsung Medical Center Combines 5G with Digital Pathology to Speed Anatomic Pathologist’s Readings of Frozen Sections, Cuts Test TAT in Half

HIMSS names SMC a ‘world leader’ in digital pathology and awards the South Korean Healthcare provider Stage 7 DIAM status  

Anatomic pathologists and clinical laboratory managers in hospitals know that during surgery, time is of the essence. While the patient is still on the surgical table, biopsies must be sent to the lab to be frozen and sectioned before going to the surgical pathologist for reading. Thus, shortening time to answer for frozen sections is a significant benefit.

To address an overwhelming number of frozen section tests and delays in surgical pathology turnaround times (TATs), Samsung Medical Center (SMC) in Seoul, South Korea, used 5G network connectivity to develop an integrated digital pathology system that is “enhancing the speed of clinical decision-making across its facilities,” according to Healthcare IT News

This effort in surgical pathology is part of a larger story of the digital transformation underway across all service lines at this hospital. For years, SMC has been on track to become one of the world’s “intelligent hospitals,” and it is succeeding. In February, SMC became the first healthcare provider to achieve Stage 7 in the HIMSS Digital Imaging Adoption Model (DIAM), which “assesses an organization’s capabilities in the delivery of medical imaging,” Healthcare IT News reported.

As pathologists and clinical laboratory leaders know, implementation of digital pathology is no easy feat. So, it’s noteworthy that SMC has brought together disparate technologies to reduce turnaround times, and that the medical center has caught the eye of leading health information technology (HIT) organizations. 

Kee Taek Jang, MD

“The digital pathology system established by the pathology department and SMC’s information strategy team could be one of the good examples of the fourth industrial revolution model applied to a hospital system,” anatomic pathologist Kee Taek Jang, MD (above), Professor of Pathology, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center told Healthcare IT News. Clinical laboratory leaders and surgical pathologists understand the value digital pathology can bring to faster turnaround times. (Photo copyright: Samsung Medical Center.)

Anatomic Pathologists Can Read Frozen Sections on Their Smartphones

Prior to implementation of its 5G digital pathology system, surgeons and their patients waited as much as 20 minutes for anatomic pathologists to traverse SMC’s medical campus to reach the healthcare provider’s cancer center diagnostic reading room, Healthcare IT News reported.

Now, SMC’s integrated digital pathology system—which combines slide scanners, analysis software, and desktop computers with a 5G network—has enabled a “rapid imaging search across the hospital,” Healthcare IT News noted. Surgical pathologists can analyze tissue samples faster and from remote locations on digital devices that are convenient to them at the time, a significant benefit to patient care.

“The system has been effective in reducing the turnaround time as pathologists can now attend to frozen test consultations on their smartphone or tablet device via 5G network anywhere in the hospital,” Jean-Hyoung Lee, SMC’s Manager of IT Infrastructure, told Healthcare IT News which noted these system results:

Additionally, through the 5G network, pathologists can efficiently access CT scans and MRI data on proton therapy cancer treatments. Prior to the change, the doctors had to download the image files in SMC’s Proton Therapy Center, according to a news release from KT Corporation, a South Korean telecommunications company that began working with SMC on building the 5G-connected digital pathology system in 2019.

SMC Leads in Digital Pathology: HIMSS

Earlier this year, HIMSS named SMC a “world leader” in digital pathology and first to reach Stage 7 in the Digital Imaging Adoption Model (DIAM), Healthcare IT News reported.

DIAM is an approach for gauging an organization’s medical imaging delivery capabilities. To achieve Stage 7—External Image Exchange and Patient Engagement—healthcare providers must also have achieved all capabilities outlined in Stages 5 and 6.

In addition, the following must also have been adopted:

  • The majority of image-producing service areas are exchanging and/or sharing images and reports and/or clinical notes based on recognized standards with care organizations of all types, including local, regional, or national health information exchanges.
  • The application(s) used in image-producing service areas support multidisciplinary interactive collaboration.
  • Patients can make appointments, and access reports, images, and educational content specific to their individual situation online.
  • Patients are able to electronically upload, download, and share their images.

“This is the most comprehensive use of integrated digital pathology we have seen,” Andrew Pearce, HIMSS VP Analytics and Global Advisory Lead, told Healthcare IT News.

SMC’s Manager of IT Planning Seungho Lim told Healthcare IT News the medical center’s goal is to become “a global advanced intelligent hospital through digital health innovation.” The plan is to offer, he added, “super-gap digital services that prioritize non-contact communication and cutting-edge technology.”

For pathologists and clinical laboratory leaders, SMC’s commitment to 5G to move digital pathology data is compelling. And its recognition by HIMSS could inspire more healthcare organization to make changes in medical laboratory workflows. SMC, and perhaps other South Korean healthcare providers, will likely continue to draw attention for their healthcare IT achievements.   

Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

Using 5G to Cut Down Diagnostic Reading by Half

KT and Samsung Medical Center to Build 5G Smart Hospital

Samsung Medical Center Achieves Stage 7 DIAM and EMRAM

Finding the Future of Care Provision: the Role of Smart Hospitals

K-Hospital Fair 2022, Success in Digital Transformation (DX) Introducing “Smart Logistics”

Digital Health Market to Hit $809.2 Billion by 2030: Grand View Research, Inc.

South Korea: The Perfect Environment for Digital Health

Implications of Academia’s Early Adoption of Whole Slide Scanning and Digital Pathology Systems

Understanding requirements of digital pathology workflow matters as regulatory and reimbursement elements align toward wider adoption beyond 2023. Upcoming Dark Daily webinar May 10 to cover infrastructure requirements

Nearly all pathology residents and fellows, as well as many histologists and other medical students, have been trained using digital images and, therefore, digital pathology tools. This resounds as a major and important development now working in tandem with recent coding decisions and regulatory recommendations that may combine to advance digital pathology to a significant tipping point.

As Dark Daily’s sister publication, The Dark Report, has described in great detail over the past several years, the trend toward digital pathology implementation started in the mid-2000s. Much has been learned through trial and error that may make the practical path forward clearer for those still on the sidelines.

Digital pathology infrastructure and information technology (IT) requirements are better known after years of research at academic centers throughout the United States—but only for those closest to the action. Two examples are University of Southern California (USC) on the West Coast and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) on the East Coast.

During a free 60-minute educational webinar on May 10, W. Dean Wallace, MD, (far left) of University of Southern California (USC) and Orly Ardon, PhD, MBA, (immediate left) of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) will explain digital pathology infrastructure, IT, and lessons learned through firsthand experiences. The webinar is sponsored by Hamamatsu, and continuing education credit is available for listening. (Photo copyrights: USC and MSKCC.)

Seven Advantages of Early Adoption of Whole Slide Imaging and Digital Pathology

Many pathologists know that academic centers throughout the U.S. have been the first to adopt and use digital pathology scanners and systems. Early work in what have become custom digital pathology ecosystems has enabled academic pathology groups to:

  • Learn how to implement, validate, and design workflows that include digital pathology systems and computational pathology.
  • Determine how physical environments need to change for slide scanners, achieving quality images, maximizing scanner utility, and expanding scanning capabilities in medium- and high-throughput laboratories.
  • Contract with pharmaceutical companies and drug developers to read digital images in support of drug research and clinical trials.
  • Understand how digital pathology applies for various use cases, including primary diagnosis, frozen section diagnosis, consultations, second opinions, and telepathology.
  • Successfully spread pathologist technical and professional support across multiple laboratory locations and remote customers.
  • Learn best practices for conducting tumor boards and peer reviews of pathology cases.
  • Validate and verify new hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stains.

Hospital and Lab Leaders Have Questions About Digital Pathology Requirements

As a result of early adopter projects, digital pathology infrastructure and IT requirements are better understood and documented for a variety of use cases, according to W. Dean Wallace, MD, Professor of Pathology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Wallace specializes in pulmonary and renal pathology with a strong interest in informatics, as well as radiology and pathology correlation, and he warns of the danger of implementing an “incomplete digital pathology system.”

Wallace will join Dark Daily for a 60-minute webinar, “Digital Pathology Implementation Strategies,” on Wednesday, May 10, at 1 p.m. Eastern. Registration is free.

This webinar is for hospital and health system leaders, as well as independent pathology groups and reference lab executives, who want to know:

  • Key workflow aspects of the components needed in a digital pathology service.
  • Common limitations of commercial digital pathology products.
  • How to structure a digital pathology implementation team.
  • A goal-based approach to developing a business case for digital pathology implementation.

Wallace and Orly Ardon, PhD, MBA, Director of Digital Pathology Operations at MSKCC, will lead the call and take questions during the webinar’s live Q&A segment.

Questions About Digital Pathology Implementation

At MSKCC, teams have scanned and archived more than six million histology slides and are prospectively scanning all in-house H&E slides.

“There is a lot of interest out there for digital pathology implementation,” Ardon told Dark Daily, “not only the AI-machine learning opportunities that are enabled with digital slides, but how do we even start a basic digital pathology journey. Institutions and labs don’t realize how many factors they have to think about before they start scanning the first slide.”

“People have limited understanding of the complexities of the business case,” Wallace added. “Do you want to go with a full 100% deployment or a targeted deployment? Do you want to get digital pathology to support tumor boards? By introducing scanners into the tumor board workflow, you can actually cause more problems than you are solving if you are not careful.

“The other aspect of it is the actual technical deployments. You need to begin with careful analysis of functions or services to support,” Wallace said, adding the soft costs of digital pathology can take lab and pathology administrators by surprise.

Ardon and Wallace will present their insights and experiences during the webinar, which has been sponsored by Hamamatsu. Those interested can learn more and register at Dark Daily here. P.A.C.E. credit is available for this program through the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS).

On the Horizon: Incentives and Further Alignment Toward Digital Pathology Adoption

Dark Daily’s new webinar is timely. Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) entered what has been called a “tryout” period to gather data about the use of new, digital-pathology-related Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes in clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups. (See coverage in The Dark Report.)

Some believe the efforts of CMS, clinical labs, and pathology groups will result in new reimbursable codes, reimbursement values, and other incentives for using digital pathology (starting sometime in 2024)—if analysis shows use of digital pathology is as widespread as numerous publications would seem to indicate.

The CPT coding development coincides with recent discussions within the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee (CLIAC) about sweeping recommendations to allow continued remote work once the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency ends on May 11 and recognize digital data as a vital component of diagnostic specimens. (See coverage in The Dark Report.)

CLIAC’s recommendations may translate into a running start for modernizing the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). CLIA as it is written currently is dated and needs to account for new and emerging technologies, such as digital pathology, medical laboratory industry sources have said for years. (See a recent Dark ReportDark Daily webinar.)

These developments, as they further align with actions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), could unleash swells of interest in onboarding whole slide scanners and digital pathology tools. Remote workflows became a priority during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it appears they will continue for a period as the Public Health Emergency unwinds, according to the FDA.

Watch Digital Pathology Implementation Strategies

Most executives at hospitals and health systems, private pathology practices, and independent reference labs are on the sidelines watching how digital pathology in research and clinical practice is unfolding.

However, as the pathology field integrates data science and computational pathology, forward-looking hospital and lab leaders can expect greater momentum toward advanced technologies, such as digital pathology tools.

Register here to participate in the upcoming webinar, “Digital Pathology Implementation Strategies.”

—Liz Carey

This content was developed through independent research and interviews by The Dark Intelligence Group, with support from Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., a provider of whole slide imaging systems and related technology such as optical sensors, light sources, and complex instrument systems that use them. Hamamatsu did not participate in the article’s development. Learn more about Hamamatsu at https://nanozoomer.hamamatsu.com/us/en.html.

Related Information

Dark Daily Webinar: Digital Pathology Implementation Strategies

Three Clinical Laboratory Trends Not to Misjudge

Shortage of Pathologists a Factor in Adoption of Digital Pathology

CLIA on Path to Recognize Lab Data as a Specimen

Use Histology Data to Illustrate Specimen “Life Cycle

New CPT Codes Debut for Digital Pathology Services

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