We need to establish ourselves. A lthough much of the Pitts- burgh meeting was practical in orientation, there was a sense that digital technologies could have clinical importance beyond the next software release from Microsoft. The presentation by Stephen S. Raab, MD, PhD, of Allegheny University Hospitals, Pittsburgh, was a case in point. But Dr. Raab added that the field of outcomes research has produced an unequivocal but not especially surprising finding, which is that pathologists often disagree about the interpretation of a particular slide or section. Understanding how to minimize interobserver variability, he said, could help pathologists anticipate the needs of clinicians and patients, not be blindsided by them.
Data clearly show more accurate diagnoses result when pathologists know a patient's history.
Equally far-reaching was the lecture by James H. Harrison Jr., MD, PhD, associate director of pathology informatics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Harrison began by delving into the terminology of data warehousing and data mining. He defined the latter as the extraction of knowledge from data. And he is not imagining merely asking the computer to find rudimentary information, such as all patients with a particular condition. Rather, he is actively exploring the use of computers in ways that begin to approximate human problem-solving.