Proscia said it has updated its Concentriq digital pathology software to improve laboratory workflow.
Updates include a first-of-its-kind performance analytics module alongside a new suite of automation features. These capabilities were designed to give laboratory managers and operators the functionality and insights they need to meaningfully improve productivity while continuously driving quality, according to the Philadelphia-based company.
Unlike other parts of the healthcare industry, pathology labs have remained dependent on manual, time-consuming processes to track key business metrics, Proscia chief product officer Nathan Buchbinder told Medical Design & Outsourcing in an interview. This has kept labs from improving productivity and making informed decisions that could otherwise improve the bottom line, especially in light of decreasing reimbursements, Buchbinder said.
Highlights of the new release include:
- A metrics dashboard to capture insights at the slide, case, pathologist, and laboratory levels and share productivity and quality trends with the team. The dashboard is designed to simplify regular reporting and facilitate internal and external audits.
- Intelligent workload balancing to improve the distribution and allocation of cases. This feature can automatically sort, triage, and assign cases based off of performance analytics, including historic performance and real-time metrics.
- Automated trigger-based notifications and alerts for team members to receive notifications based on actions recorded in Concentriq. Lab managers receive alerts when a consult, restain, or recut is requested. Alerts are triggered for the pathologist or lab manager when a case becomes overdue or additional work is completed, prioritizing assignments and ensuring quick turnaround times are met.
The update also includes an enhancement of Concentriq’s case viewer that uses artificial intelligence and stored information to help the pathologist to determine the next steps to perform. The platform tracks how many cases are in the queue, how much time a pathologist can expect to spend on it, and whether someone else in the laboratory has already viewed the case, according to Buchbinder, who described Concentriq and its updates as “taking laboratory work out of the stone age.”
Pathology labs have been able to digitize glass slides since about 2006, and Proscia launched Concentriq in 2016.
“Over the past three years, it’s turned from a conversation around, ‘Why should I be adopting digital pathology?’ to a conversation around, ‘How do I adopt digital pathology today in a way that makes sense to me?'” Buchbinder said. “The imperative of going digital has really seemed to have struck across the board.”
Concentriq is not used in making primary diagnoses.
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