Impact of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Diagnostic Pathology

Abstract

This is an era where digitalization has creeped into every single task that we perform—be it transaction of money online, booking a cab on an app-based platform, or consulting doctors online. And behind such digitalization, there lies an advanced technology platform that relies heavily on artificial intelligence (AI). Although the onset and subsequent progress of digitalization in health care was slightly slow, the recent pandemic of COVID-19 that hit the world forced everyone in the healthcare industry to adopt digitalization to its maximum potential. Healthcare digitalization has touched upon various aspects, viz. medical education, clinical consultations, radiological and pathological diagnosis, and also medical research. Of these various fields, the impact of digitalization and AI on diagnostic pathology has been notably significant. It has touched every aspect of a pathologist's life creating a human–machine interface—be it direct transfer of machine-generated reports to the software, highlighting the abnormal values for cross-check, ability to certify the reports online and make them available for the patients to view on their digital platforms, up to a level where whole slides of histopathology can be scanned and viewed through a software without even having the need for a microscope. However, despite its positive impact on the overall healthcare scenario, there are some challenges that need to be overcome. But before we succumb to the pessimism on AI, we should critically analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of the same. This review discusses the various domains of pathology where digitalization and AI have shown their impact with an additional analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of digitalization in pathology especially in times of the recent pandemic of COVID-19.

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