Laboratory Informatics Approaches to Improving Care for Gender- Diverse Patients.

Improving care for gender-diverse (GD) patients necessitates developing informatics tools and approaches to support optimal laboratory testing. This requires increased functionality and standardization of laboratory information system/electronic health record and data collection processes. Data tailored to accommodate immediate clinical care and clinical decision support (CDS) also have an impact on interoperability and downstream data needs for patients.

Optimizing the data in direct access testing: information technology to support an emerging care model.

Direct access testing (DAT) is an emerging care model that provides on-demand laboratory services for certain preventative, diagnostic, and monitoring indications. Unlike conventional testing models where health care providers order tests and where sample collection is performed onsite at the clinic or laboratory, most interactions between DAT consumers and the laboratory are virtual. Tests are ordered and results delivered online, and specimens are frequently self-collected at home with virtual support.

Proceedings of the Association for Pathology Informatics Bootcamp 2022.

The Pathology Informatics Bootcamp, held annually at the Pathology Informatics Summit, provides pathology trainees with essential knowledge in the rapidly evolving field of Pathology Informatics. With a focus on data analytics, data science, and data management in 2022, the bootcamp addressed the growing importance of data analysis in pathology and laboratory medicine practice. The expansion of data-related subjects in Pathology Informatics Essentials for Residents (PIER) and the Clinical Informatics fellowship examinations highlights the increasing significance of these skills in pathology practice in particular and medicine in general.

The Lines That Held Us: Assessing Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in SARS-CoV-2 Testing.

Background: Racial disparities in SARS-CoV-2 prevalence are apparent. Race is a sociocultural construct, necessitating investigation into how sociocultural factors contribute.

Methods: This cross-sectional study linked laboratory data of adult patients between February 29 and May 15, 2020 with socio-demographics variables from the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS).

Responding to COVID-19: The UW Medicine Information Technology Services Experience.

Background: UW Medicine was one of the first health systems to encounter and treat COVID-19 patients in the United States, starting in late February 2020.

Objective: Here we describe the rapid rollout of capabilities by UW Medicine Information Technology Services (ITS) to support our clinical response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations for health systems to urgently consider, as they plan their own response to this and potentially other future pandemics.

Methods: Our recommendations include establishing a hospital incident command structure that includes tight integration with IT, creating automated dashboards for incident command, optimizing emergency communication to staff and patients, and preparing human resources, security, other policies, and equipment to support the transition of all nonessential staff to telework.

A Taxonomic Index for Retrieval of Digitized Whole Slide Images from an Electronic Database for Medical School and Pathology Residency Education.

Since the advent of whole slide imaging, the utility of digitized slides for education in medical school and residency has been amply documented. Pathology departments at most major academic medical centers have made digitized slides available to pathology residents for study, even before the use of digitized slides for clinical purposes (i.e.