Rapid Digital Pathology Transformation of NYU Langone Surgical Pathology In 1 year.

Background: In mid-2023 we started planning an integration and adoption strategy of Digital Pathology implementation at NYU Langone Health. By September of 2024 we rolled out a brand new, system-wide Digital Pathology solution with the scaling to serve ALL NYU Langone Surgical Pathologists. By September of 2025 we had removed all glass slide distribution to all of our 95 Surgical Pathologists, who were all using only Digital Pathology workflow.

Text: Digital Pathology adoption has been variable across the specialty in the United States. Led by early pioneering institutions and companies, the technology has now advanced and traction is increasing by the day. When we originally conceived our own Digital Pathology implementation in 2023 at NYU Langone, we too had formulated a multi-year, phased-in approach to adopting this technology. However our health system leadership found excitement and enthusiasm in our Digital Pathology ideas and encouraged us to do a more rapid implementation; challenging us to do this in 9 months. We didn't quite hit the 9 month goal, but instead completed this in 12 months. Going from 0% of slides scanned in September 2024 to 100% of our annual 2 million+ slide volume by 2025. Our adoption and use of digital pathology similarly was 0% in September 2024 and was at >95% of cases signed out using only digital pathology by September of 2025. By January of 2026 the data showed that 99.87% of all NYU Langone Surgical Pathology cases were signed out ONLY using digital pathology (no microscope use or glass slide distribution necessary).

Goals: The goal of this talk is to document & discuss the change managements aspects of Digital Pathology implementation and adoption; and to provide a counterpoint to the multi-year phased in approaches of implementation of digital pathology that have been widely documented. We feel that rapid transformation allowed us to consolidate many processes and provide unity in our Pathologists adopting a new workflow.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand one method of how digital pathology can be implemented at a large academic medical center rapidly
2. Become aware of the change management elements in this kind of transformation
3. Rapid adoption has distinct advantages over a phased-in, prolonged approach.