Ben Swanson, MD, PhD, describes himself as a “tech geek.”
Dr. Swanson, an associate professor in the UNMC Department of Pathology and Microbiology, said he always has been something of an early adopter, alert not only to new technologies but to their possibilities and implications.
That’s part of what makes him a great fit for his newest role: the department’s new director of pathology informatics and digital innovation.
“Dr. Swanson exemplifies the spirit of academic health care delivery with his passion for innovation and a deep commitment to translational research,” said Joseph Khoury, MD, chair of the UNMC Department of Pathology and Microbiology. “In this new role, Ben will join other outstanding leaders in health care informatics in our department. Through this team, we aim to deepen our service to the community through outstanding laboratory and pathology diagnostics.”
Dr. Khoury’s vision includes optimization of the medical informatics infrastructure for pathology and clinical laboratories, enhancement of personalized medicine and biomarker testing platforms, and incorporation of artificial intelligence tools to enhance diagnostic accuracy and speed.
Dr. Swanson describes his new role as three-pronged: to evaluate the department’s laboratory information system, to speed the transformation of pathology at UNMC into a digital format, and eventually to create a digital pathology fellowship at UNMC. (Dr. Swanson is the director of the existing gastrointestinal and liver pathology fellowship.)
Digitization is “the biggest area of change that currently is occurring, not only within our department, but in pathology as a field,” Dr. Swanson said. “We already have digital scanners on our campus and do some digital pathology. But we are looking to expand it to encompass more and more of our clinical practice as well as research endeavors.”
The advantages are many, Dr. Swanson said, pointing out that the move to digital imaging is analogous to what happened in the field of radiology several decades ago.
“Eventually, it will be every pathologist’s choice to use a computer or a microscope,” he said. “There may be advantages and disadvantages both ways.”
One of the big advantages in going digital is that the widening field of artificial intelligence has developed into areas useful to pathologists.
“That is a big push within our field,” Dr. Swanson said. “There are now proprietary computer programs that can help pathologists screen images and photos to find cancer faster and more efficiently. That’s one of the many reasons to use digital pathology. It can better interface with computer programs that can help us do our jobs better and deliver better patient care.”
Digitization also could increase and streamline opportunities for collaboration, not only between pathologists but between pathology and other disciplines. In his role as part of the team leading the university’s paraffin and frozen tissue banks, Dr. Swanson said he can see great advantage for researchers as well as clinicians.
Still, changes won’t occur overnight.
“One of my colleagues said it’s like laying the train tracks for big things to move down later – big amounts of data, large complex calculations, alterations to the department’s workflow.”
Right now, Dr. Swanson is evaluating the department’s current system, including the computer program that pathologists use to enter diagnoses or anatomic pathology, how it talks to Epic, the medical center’s institutional electronic medical record system, and so on.
“Pathology and laboratory medicine touches every corner of the health care field,” he said. “A lot of diagnoses depend on pathology and decision making. A lot of the things that are considered gold standards are the laboratory tests that we do. So that’s aim number one.”
Dr. Swanson’s third long-term goal is to develop a pathology informatics fellowship.
“Pathology informatics involves collecting and examining large sets of data that are usually performed in the clinical laboratory or anatomic pathology – and then using these large, complex sets of data to improve patient care,” he said.
Dr. Swanson said that digitization and artificial intelligence are no substitute for the knowledge and experience of pathologists, whether at UNMC or beyond.
“These simply are tools,” he said. “Like anything else we’ve developed, we can use them to do our jobs better.”