Design Day 2021 Projects – Table View

Enabling Digital Pathology Adoption Via Hardware Interface Innovation

Team: PathNav

Program:

Pathology is a critical field of medicine which enables the modern diagnostics which define quality healthcare. However, while every other form of imaging has largely gone digital (in some cases, like radiology, decades ago), pathology is still analog (i.e. essentially every slide is still viewed on a physical microscope). This creates a variety of costly inefficiencies with collaboration, annotation, and storage – but yet while the technology for digital pathology exists there has still been issues with adoption. Through a human factors engineering lens and the use of the Technology Acceptance Model, it is apparent that the ease of navigation is one of the key factors hindering adoption. As such, we designed and manufactured a novel trackpad/hotkey device for digital pathology navigation. Designed with ergonomics, efficiency, and usability in mind, our solution combines the well established strengths of consumer trackpad with pathology oriented functionalities. To test, the team built a custom clinically rooted computer based testing platform with synthetic tissue and real pathological tasks from which we could quantify performance. This device has the potential to improve the objective usability, ease of use, and perceived enjoyment of digital slide navigation; consequently increasing adoption and enabling the digital pathology revolution.