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Head of Pathology Innovation and Business Development at Unilabs Pathology Switzerland; Founder, President of the Board of Directors, AGINKO Foundation

Biggest challenge in pathology? It is a significant challenge to attract talent to the field of pathology. There is a worldwide shortage of practicing pathologists and the numbers aren’t improving. This can result in extended turnaround times for diagnoses, and particularly in cancer cases. This shortage is especially pronounced in war-torn areas. The industry needs to look at how we can attract fresh talent and I believe we should be encouraging medical students to broaden their vision of how to share their expertise and apply their skills. We should show them how technology is making pathology an increasingly exciting field to be part of.

Exciting developments and trends? Digital pathology is incredibly exciting. By embracing AI as well as automation, we can change the way we work. Computational pathology, for example, is allowing us to perform better diagnostics and more targeted molecular pathology testing. Histopathology in particular can benefit from automation. There is a global histopathologist crisis right now and this is creating a system bottleneck. I am convinced that the use of robots to facilitate some of the more repetitive histopathology tasks could take the pressure off our experts.

My pathology professor at the University of Bern once, controversially, likened pathologists to smart gorillas by explaining that just as gorillas use pattern recognition to select the leaves they are eating, pathologists look for patterns in their work. As we know, pattern recognition is a key feature of AI models so I think we should be humble and acknowledge the role AI can play in our field.

Book recommendation? I highly recommend “The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform The Work Of Human Experts”, written by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind. This thought-provoking book sets out two technology-led futures for today’s professions. One of these hypothetical futures is simply a more efficient version of the reality we find ourselves in today, with professionals leveraging technology to streamline ways of working and boost productivity. The other hypothetical future is more transformational and depicts today’s professions being gradually replaced by systems and technologies. The authors theorize that, while both futures will likely exist, the second future will dominate in the long term. The book encourages us to consider how technology could transform the work of all professionals and what this means for the way we share our expertise.