PathXchange for care collaboration

Radiology has been digitized for over a decade now. Digital radiology presents itself as one of the greatest technological advances in medical imaging world. Benefits of digital radiology have been enormous and have helped facilities go filmless. Pathology has similar needs, however, still largely depends on physical examination of the glass slides under a microscope.

Although whole slide imaging technologies are being implemented in pathology practices, the adoption of such technologies has been much slower. Pathology slide images are many times the size of the typical radiology image. One of the major concerns with pathology going digital has been the storage and streaming of such digital slides over the internet. More and more labs are now looking for vendors to take away the burden of storing and managing such huge images.

In an article published by Dr Bruce Friedman he discusses how digital pathology vendors can offer a total basket-of-services including storage of such large image files (See: Digital Pathology Offered as a Service Rather Than a Product). In another article recently posted by Amanda Lowe from Digital Pathology Consultants, she discusses SaaS and cloud computing technologies being applied to digital pathology (See: SAAS- Cloud 9 For Digital Pathology?).

PathXchange brings the field of pathology into the digital age by combining digital pathology, SaaS, and cloud computing technologies to provide, online storage and archival of slide images. It supports from a variety of image formats- including static images and whole slide images. PathXchange is an extremely robust and scalable global hosting infrastructure that:

• Provides unlimited storage for pathology data on high performance off-site servers
• Guarantees 24 x 7 accessibility
• Provides instant content delivery, and
• Requires no IT installation and maintenance

Further, PathXchange combines it with Web 2.0 features to promote exchange of pathological cases, ideas, knowledge, information, products, and services. Pathologists from around the world can network and stay connected. Cases and information can originate from anywhere, from any platform, and shared with the sub-groups of your choice. It enables-

• Online sharing of digital cases
  
• Rapid dissemination of knowledge and information
• Online second opinion consultation
• eLearning
• Forums and discussion

PathXchange creates an environment for care collaboration for pathologists to experience Pathology 2.0 at its best!