Earlier this year, we invited The Pathologist community to reflect on how they are meeting the demands of modern medicine – and turning creativity, leadership, innovation, and fresh thinking into meaningful change.
Judged blind by a panel of peers, the entries produced a list of 50 remarkable people spanning five continents. Across countries, specialties, and career stages, their stories converge on a compelling idea: pathology’s future will be shaped not by technology alone, but by the people who make it accessible, communicate its value, and translate innovation into practice.
But first, there's a visibility issue to resolve. For a discipline that underpins almost every clinical decision, pathology remains remarkably hidden from view. Many of this year’s contributors see that invisibility not simply as an image problem, but as a barrier to the specialty’s influence on patient care. Kamran Mirza captures the challenge, writing, “The microscope taught us to see what others could not. The coming era asks something harder: that we make ourselves visible.”
Aadil Ahmed urges pathologists to take ownership of the entire diagnostic pathway, while Karen Villar Zarra makes the case for bringing pathologists closer to patients and primary care. Others are finding new ways to bring the laboratory into the conversation. Kenechukwu Ojukwu, Rodney Rohde, Sophia Chandrasekar, and Stephanie Whitehead each explore how clearer communication can make pathology’s value more widely understood. Together, their perspectives point to a more visible future – one in which laboratory professionals step out from behind the scenes and are recognized as clinical partners, communicators, and advocates in their own right.
Greater visibility is also about creating the time and space for pathologists to be more present. That is where AI may prove most transformative, say the Power Listers. Across the collection, finalists explore how it can reduce repetitive work and return attention to the human skills at the heart of the profession. Andrew Janowczyk focuses on continuous quality assurance; Biswajeeta Saha on rigorous validation; Poombal on “failure-aware innovation”; and Andres Restrepo on AI as an assistant rather than an authority.
Rajendra Singh describes the kind of profession he thinks AI should create, writing, “The best AI in pathology should be invisible. It should remove friction, give pathologists time back, and let us spend that time on judgment rather than clerical work.”
Yet the value of innovation ultimately depends on whom it reaches. As Andres Restrepo puts it: “Innovation should never widen disparities. It should narrow them.”
That principle runs through the work of Power Listers determined to prevent geography, resources, or infrastructure from deciding who benefits from better diagnostics. Jeffrey So is strengthening pathology in resource-limited settings and Ahmed Kalebi is building a digital-first laboratory in Kenya. While Derrick Forchetti is demonstrating what innovation can achieve in community laboratories, Kwabena Owusu Aninkora is taking autopsy expertise directly to underserved communities.
Together, these efforts give the Power List a distinctly global perspective. They recast progress not as the arrival of a technology in the best-resourced centers, but as the steady extension of reliable expertise to more laboratories, more communities, and more patients.
Expanding access is only sustainable if pathology also builds the workforce capable of delivering it. Shortages recur throughout the essays, but finalists rarely present recruitment alone as the answer. Their focus is broader: future-proofing the profession through education, mentorship, purposeful training, and communities in which the next generation can develop the confidence and judgement to thrive.
That means preparing people not simply to use new tools, but to think critically within a changing discipline. Neha Seth argues that information alone does not create judgement, while Laura Severs places professional competencies alongside technical knowledge. Peter Hu is building molecular diagnostics education pathways; Rex Famitangco advocates developing talent rather than competing for a shrinking pool; and AlBatool AlMahdy Abdelghaffar links the long-term resilience of pathology directly to sustained investment in people. Together, they suggest that the profession’s strongest safeguard against uncertainty is a workforce equipped to learn, adapt, and lead.
But a well-equipped workforce also needs reliable tools in order to meet its potential. Among the innovators in the Power List, a recurring theme addressed the gap between what is technically possible and what actually works in a laboratory. John Manuel explicitly identifies implementation rather than discovery as the principal barrier to innovation, saying, “The future of laboratory medicine will not be defined solely by what we invent, but by how successfully we translate innovation into everyday patient care.”
Mika Kuisma focuses on lowering barriers to digital pathology adoption, while Andrew Janowczyk addresses the infrastructure needed to deploy AI safely. Others emphasize integrating morphology, molecular testing, AI, and clinical information rather than allowing new technologies to remain isolated. For Soufiane Azdad, the priority lies in fixing pre-analytical workflows before layering intelligence on top.
For these Power Listers, future-proofing pathology is not about possessing the newest technology, but translating it into better workflows and better patient care.
The 2026 Power List Leading Voices are not simply anticipating the future of pathology; they are describing concrete ways to shape it. And The Pathologist celebrates them all.
Click here to view the 2026 Power List!
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