Incorporating Digital Pathology into Patient Conversations

Pathologists have long been the unseen architects of diagnosis — yet patients rarely engage directly with the specialists interpreting their most critical results. This session brings that conversation into the open.
 
A recent DPA member survey found that over 84% of pathologists want to offer patient consultations, and 77% currently meet with patients to discuss pathology results, while 73% have been approached by patients or families in the past year to review slides. The interest is there. What’s needed now is a roadmap.
 
This 30-minute session features Dr. Anne Frances Buckley, MD — a neuropathologist at Duke University who has been conducting pathology clinics for many years — paired with a 5-minute pre-recorded patient video from Rose Ewald, a patient of Dr. Buckley’s whose rare muscle disease diagnosis journey illustrates exactly what is at stake when a pathologist chooses to engage directly with the patient behind the tissue.
 
Duke is now implementing ScanSlated, a HIPAA-compliant platform that overlays patient-friendly pathology reports directly in the patient portal — with hover-over definitions and links to vetted resources. Dr. Buckley’s session will explore both the current practice of pathology clinics and the trajectory toward fully digital, patient-accessible pathology at the point of care.

The session concludes with 5 minutes of audience Q&A, ensuring the audience can engage directly with Dr. Buckley on practical implementation.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the structure and practice of a pathology clinic, including how a neuropathologist conducts patient-facing consultations using microscopy, digital tools, and multidisciplinary context.
2. Articulate the patient’s experience of receiving a complex diagnosis and the impact of direct pathologist engagement on understanding, fear reduction, and informed decision-making.
3. Identify practical steps — including patient-friendly reporting platforms such as ScanSlated — that pathologists and institutions can take to move toward digital, patient-accessible pathology.