By: Sylvia Asa, Professor of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University

 

The history of digital pathology goes back well over 15 years and the precursor to the Digital Pathology Association was the Aperio Users Group (Aperio). Aperio started the tradition of an annual meeting for communication between the developers and customers. 

 

As the Keynote speaker at the 2010 Aperio Users Conference, I thought I had 20/20 Vision for Pathology: I predicted that by 2020 we would all be fully digital! Fortunately, there were less than 100 people there, so my less-than-perfect vision was not on broad display.

 

  1. In 2009 the Digital Pathology Association was spun out of the Aperio Users Group. DPA has grown into a major force in pathology with more than 4,700 members from 110 countries. 
  2. In the intervening years, the meeting moved from San Diego to Baltimore where we survived Hurricane Sandy in 2012, then to San Antonio in 2013. 
  3. Sadly, I missed the 2014 meeting in San Francisco due to a conflict with the IAP in Thailand, but then I went to Boston for the 2015 meeting. 
  4. 2016, 2017, and 2018 saw us back in San Diego where we had started – it felt like coming home! 
  5. 2019 was a new adventure – we came to Orlando for the first time. But it took COVID to get us truly digital in meeting format for the first time, and in 2020 we had over 500 registrants!  

 

After the slow rise in interest and attendance, the last few years have seen steady growth in the presence of digital pathology around the world and participation in the PathVisions conference.  

 

As we look back at the 15th annual DPA PathVisions conference, we celebrate breaking all the records – including attendees (860), exhibitors (65), talks and posters (more than 50 of each), and more exciting news in the digital pathology world than ever before!  We are almost at the point where we can truly say that we have achieved our goal of making Digital pathology the same thing as Pathology.

 

Disclaimer: In seeking to foster discourse on a wide array of ideas, the Digital Pathology Association believes that it is important to share a range of prominent industry viewpoints. This article does not necessarily express the viewpoints of the DPA; however, we view this as a valuable point with which to facilitate discussion.