PATHAI LIVE COLLABORATION FEATURE

Digital pathology improves pathologists’ speed and accuracy when diagnosing diseases. When difficult cases arise, multiple specialists are required to review a patient’s sample, a process that requires in-person meetings which take time and increase turnaround time. AISight Live, a live collaboration feature, allows pathologists to synchronously collaborate in a digital platform to identify more diseases, for more patients, more quickly and efficiently. 

Tl;dr: I designed an online live collaboration tool for pathologists to synchronously view slides to deliver accurate diagnoses.

In order to comply with my non-disclosure agreement and HIPAA, I have not included any proprietary information, precise research data, or PHI in this case study.

My Responsibilities

I was the lead product designer working with one product manager, and six engineers.

Ideation

Research: I conducted a multi-pronged research campaign, including attending trade shows to see how competitors addressed similar workflows, spoke at length with many pathologists, and identified digital collaboration tools.

Deployment Strategy: I worked with product and engineering to help define the MVP feature set for launch.

Exploration: I created multiple concepts quickly by relying on our design system.

Iteration

Experimentation: I tested my concepts with both internal and external pathologists to gauge effectiveness.

Iteration: The designs took in feedback from multiple stakeholders at each point to push the concept forward.

Implementation

Learn through launch: We actually soft launched the feature to showcase it to prospective clients. The main 1.0 launch will occur in Q1 2024.

The Challenge

problem space

Historically, when a pathologist requires a second opinion, they need to coordinate with their colleagues to view the slide. These meetings range from informal “curbside consultations” with individual colleagues to formal, intra-group reviews known as “group consensus meetings”, to even more serious inter-group reviews known as “tumor boards”.

This results in longer and more expensive diagnoses turnaround time. I had already designed a region comment feature which allowed pathologists to tag other users so they could view a highlighted region and provide asynchronous feedback.

updater opportunity

A key value proposition of digital pathology is the enablement of decentralized, digital collaboration. Synchronous collaboration represents a significant feature upgrade for pathologists who are not co-localized. This feature aimed to decrease pathologists’ case turnaround time and increase the number of cases they review. With an understanding of the problem space, the main objective I had was:

Provide a synchronous collaboration platform that allows pathologists view, annotate, and communicate together.

Wireframing and Initial Design

I created and iterated on the initial wireframes which were tested relentlessly to determine which aspects held water and which would find themselves on the cutting room floor. Early concepts explored different IA treatments, ranging from tactical, individual case-level support to platform-adjacent placement allowing for pathologists to work through a larger case queue.  

Iteration

With each exploration, I shared with a group of seven pathologists to validate if this feature would solve their problems in the most efficient and user friendly way. 

The original MVP scope was to support the curbside consultation flow, which in most cases is when pathologists are looking for quick validation on one case. Therefore, I started with a tactical, per slide tool that only allowed pathologists to look at one slide. Pathologists responded by saying it would be too cumbersome for them to adopt because they’d need to start new sessions whenever they’d want to talk about another case, something they did frequently. This insight led me to push back on the MVP scope to expand it to address more core use cases. Ultimately, the product team agreed based on feedback 

As I continued to iterate, I pulled back on the IA so that it lived alongside the entire platform, allowing pathologists to add cases to a queue to fulfill more use cases like group consensus meetings and tumor boards. These types of meetings include many more specialists that each bring their own “hard to diagnose” cases to the conversation for everyone to review. Pulling back the IA allowed me to address more use cases, which pathologists reacted to much more approvingly.

THE FINAL DESIGN

My final design allowed pathologists to add cases from a multiple of contextually relevant touchpoints. Exciting features included allowing pathologists to spotlight other users so they could more easily follow along as their session guests navigated around. I added “skittles” which tracked which cases each session participant was currently on. I also added both voice and text chat features to allow for full flexibility in how the pathologists communicated with each other.

THE RESULTS

This feature officially launched in Q1 2024 and our in house lab immediately started using it to great success. As in house lab director Dr. Shawn Kinsey puts it:

More importantly, this tool allowed us to sign 3 major deals shortly after its release. This feature was credited by our new partners as a key value driver that pushed our platform across the line, vaulting our 2-years young platform well passed our competitors’ decades-old viewer products.

THE TAKEAWAYS 

Synchronous collaboration is one of the major benefits to a digitized pathology workflow. My designs not only met pathologists where they were in their analog workflow, but incorporated well known tech-adjacent paradigms commonly found in other platforms they work in to reduce the cognitive load of learning new tools. What I’ve shown here is the initial launch version, with many more iterations to come as this product competes in the digital pathology workspace.