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=Welcome!=

Welcome to the Pathology Informatics Curriculum Wiki. This is a public wiki based on community-based, continually updated online resources. Please read more about this website below.

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=Goals=

The goals of the Pathology Informatics Curriculum Wiki are four-fold:
 * 1) To increase interest among pathology residents in pathology informatics
 * 2) To become a shared educational resource for pathology training programs to supplement or develop their own local curriculum in pathology informatics.
 * 3) To increase research activities in the field.
 * 4) To connect pathology residents to experts in pathology informatics.

=Introduction=

Pathology informatics
[|Pathology] as a discipline provides critical information in the diagnosis and monitoring of disease. The use of laboratory and pathology services has been increasing over the years, both in the number of tests requested and their relative impact on clinical decision-making. It is estimated that about two-thirds of important clinical decisions are based on data from pathology [|laboratories]. Furthermore, [|outcomes research], clinical guidelines, [|performance improvement], and [|quality assurance] programs also depend on data from pathology services. Given the data-intensive nature of the field, [|informatics] is integral to the discipline of pathology.

Pathology informatics has to do with the "acquisition, organization, validation, storage, retrieval, integration, analysis, communication, and presentation of information, using computers and information technology as tools" within the field of pathology. [|Information] can be thought of as [|data] (i.e. raw facts, figures) processed or interpreted in such a way as to provide meaning. Information, understood and utilized in various clinical contexts, forms the basis for medical knowledge, judgment, and wisdom. With the growing number of lab tests, genetic assays, and emerging technologies, training in pathology informatics will be critical to meeting the demands of providing accurate, timely, and comprehensible information to the patient and clinician.

Curriculum development
In 2003 Henricks, Boyer, Harrison, Tuthill and Healy proposed a [|standardized curriculum] in pathology informatics, and the idea has since been accepted by the Training and Education Committee of the [|Association for Pathology Informatics]. However, the pathology informatics community is small, the effort necessary to develop and maintain an effective curriculum is substantial, and any curriculum, even one created with the best of intentions, may quickly become anachronistic in this era of rapidly changing technology. Thus, this curriculum, while based on the ideas of Hendricks et. al, is published as public wiki and takes advantage of community-based, continually updated on-line sources such as [|Wikipedia] as well as references on-line lectures and courseware from well maintained sites, such as the [|archives of the APIII conference]and the [|MIT Open CourseWare] website or the [|Winter Courses of the Catai].

Intended Use
Given that not all training programs have expertise in this subspecialty, we believe that a shared online resource would best meet the needs of increasing pathology informatics training across residency programs. At the same time, this online wiki is intended as a supplement to, not a substitute for, formal departmental support for informatics-related education. Training in pathology informatics must also involve residents in ongoing departmental activities in information management and communication (e.g. meetings on quality, electronic medical records, electronic order entry, reporting critical values, etc.). We have highlighted some additional resources and ideas for activities in the lessons for faculty and residency programs that may be useful when starting or developing local informatics curricula.

Please get involved
We encourage contributors to (1) use the the wiki format to improve and extend this curriculum; (2) help edit and maintain the pathology informatics related pages in [|Wikipedia] that are linked to this curriculum, and (3) create new pathology informatics pages in Wikipedia and link them to this website. In each of the lessons of the curriculum, we highlight areas where we feel that there is need for new or updated articles in Wikipedia relating to that topic.

You may also consider being involved in our Editorial Board.

=Why a Wiki?= [|Wiki software] allows multiple users to easily create and update a set of interlinked web pages on the internet. The most famous example of this is the online encyclopedia, [|Wikipedia]. A number of schools and institutions utilize wikis for educational purposes and to facilitate group learning outside the classroom.

=Getting Started= OR
 * Click on the edit button above to put your own content on this page.
 * Go to Getting started.

=Need Help?=
 * Click on the help link above to learn more about how to use your wiki.

=References=
 * 1) Henricks WH, Boyer PJ, Harrison JH, Tuthill JM, Healy JC. [|Informatics training in pathology residency programs: proposed learning objectives and skill sets for the new millennium] . Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2003 Aug;127(8):1009-18.
 * 2) Plebani, M . [|Exploring the iceberg of errors in laboratory medicine] . Clinica Chimica Acta. 2009;404:16-23.
 * 3) Cowan, DF, ed. [|Informatics for the clinical laboratory: a practical guide] . 2005. Springer-Verlag, New York. 324pp. (ISBN: 978-0-387-24449-5)
 * 4) Sinard, J.H. [|Practical Pathology Informatics: demystifying informatics for the practicing anatomic pathologist] . 2006. Springer-Verlag, London. 380pp (ISBN: 978-0-387-28057-8)
 * 5) College of American Pathologists [|Pathology Informatics bibliography].
 * 6) Pantanowitz L, Henricks WH, Beckwith B. Medical laboratory informatics . Clin Lab Med 2007 Dec; 27 (4):823-43.
 * 7) Wiki Handbook of Biomedical Informatics. []
 * 8) Moore GW. What is Pathology Informatics? []
 * 9) Ferrer-Roca O. [|Mobile phones in pathology]. J.Telemed & Telecare 16(3):165,2010
 * 10) Ferrer-Roca O., Marcano F. "[|Computer assisted microscopy]. The era of Small Size slides and 4M-microscopes". BIOSIGNALS 2010, Portugal, ISBN: 978-989-674-018-4: 517-522.
 * 11) Ferrer-Roca O. "[|Quality control y telemedicine. CE label]". Advances in Telemedicine: Technologies, enabling factors and scenarios. InTech, 2011. pp. 261 - 270. ISBN 978-953-307-159-6.
 * 12) Tous R, Delgado J, Zinkl T., Toran P., Alcalde G., Goetz M, & Ferrer-Roca O. "The Anatomy of an Optical Biopsy Semantic Retrieval System" IEEE Multimedia July-September 2011 vol. 18 no. 3 ISSN: 1070-986X

=Blogs=


 * 1) Lab Soft News: []
 * 2) Digital Pathology Blog: []
 * 3) Pathology Informatics from the Trenches: []
 * 4) Virchow's Pixel: []
 * 5) Informatics Professor: []
 * 6) The 1x Objective: []
 * 7) Aperio's Blog: [].

=Additional Resources=
 * 1) LabInfoTech Summit: []
 * 2) APIII: []
 * 3) Journal of Pathology Informatics [|www.jpathinformatics.org]
 * 4) [|Forensic Pathology]
 * 5) Free digital slide sharing service: [|SecondSlide.com]
 * 6) Telemedicine: [|www.catai.net/blog]

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