Slashdot Reports:

“The academic publisher Elsevier has attracted controversy for its high prices, the practice of bundling journals for sale to libraries and its support for legislation such as SOPA and the Research Works Act. Fields medal-winning mathematician Tim Gowers decided to go public with a blog post describing how he’ll no longer have anything to do with Elsevier journals, and suggesting that a public website where mathematicians and scientists could register their support for an Elsevier boycott would further the cause. Such a website now exists, with hundreds of academics signing-up so far. John Baez has a nice write-up of the problem and possible solutions.”

I’m not sure how much traction this will really have, but it may bring to light the fact that the academic journal business model is severely overdue for a revamp.  Frankly, it is absurd to charge $30-50 for a 3 page article, which, if you are not working in a large academic center, you have little access to otherwise.   Let alone the fact that the articles were submitted to them basically for free.

It is frustrating to watch history repeat itself constantly, and it is hard to not conclude that media corporations are fueled solely by greed.  We all want to make money; I get it.  I can also see how it might be easier to cling to an outdated business model rather than to innovate to keep pace with technology and the evolving needs of the customer.  Unfortunately, that is no excuse.

I am desperately hoping that what happened with Apple and music (and most recently, textbooks) and Amazon and leisure books will happen with academic journals.  In my opinion, revamping their business models has saved their respective industries.  My fear, however, is that academic journals will remain greedy and obstinate like newspapers and the movie studios who clearly just don’t get it.

While Gowers’ heart is in the right place, gaining real momentum may prove daunting.  Perhaps the only real way to light a fire under the collective rears of the publishers would be to get the support of major academic institutions, but this also may prove daunting for reasons any physician could readily guess.

Call me weird, but I think that potentially life-saving information should be open-sourced, otherwise one could go as far as to conclude that the academic journal co’s are putting prices on the heads of patients (I of course wouldn’t go that far, but one could I suppose…).  Also, I’d venture a guess that most doctors would innately choose to share information over holding it hostage for cash (aka I’d like to think that we are more Woznian than Jobsian).

I know I am not the only physician that thinks this way- a notable exception to this disturbing trend is The Journal of Pathology Informatics.  I don’t need to go on about what a quality journal this is, as anyone that reads this blog is surely familiar with it, but it is worth mentioning, that they get it right-  perhaps the best angle of attack should be to take back our articles and start distributing them ourselves. You don’t need a third party to peer review, publish and distribute your findings anymore.  Articles can be emailed for proofing and peer review and then published online for free.  Like YouTube did for musicians, you don’t need the backing of a mega-corporation to get the word out anymore.

Once we professionals as a whole realize this and become comfortable with the concept, the game is over, and if the publishers don’t get on-board and start updating their practices, they will be left in the dust.  My advice to them is to offer pdf articles for $1.99/article in a single, curated “store” because it is certainly more than the $0.00 they will get when we stop submitting articles to them.

Link to the Elsevier boycott page: http://thecostofknowledge.com/

This has been all over the web today, just thought I’d pass it along.

DrChrono is an EMR iPad app from DrChrono, Inc. that has generated a lot of buzz recently.  Any practitioner who uses it in their office may qualify for up to $44,000 in stimulus money under the HITECH Act (the idea being that EHR’s save a ton of money- invest a little to save a lot).

So aside from the headline-grabbing statement, is the app any good?

I signed up and have poked around a bit, it’s REALLY interesting.  Well laid out, easy to use.  There’s text to speech, the ability to add pictures, bill the encounter, look up CPT codes, and even integrate with your Google Calendar.  Pricing varies from FREE up to $799/month (which really isn’t that bad, relatively speaking).

When I signed up, “Pathologist” was one of the selection choices, but as it’s written now, it doesn’t much cater to pathologists, but it could be tweaked to be pretty useful at sign-out!  Right now, I’ll use it as a CPT/ICD-9 dictionary, but I’ll keep playing around with it to see what else it could be used for on the lab side of things.

Here is a link to the deal on the deal.

Here is a link to the app.

The primary reason for such neglect has been a conscious decision to hunker down and begin the death march towards the AP/CP Boards (for which we finally have a date: May25/26) and 40 hour study weeks on top of 40 hour work weeks do not lend themselves to moonlighting as Chatty Cathys on the interwebs…

Come June, however, I do promise to be back, and with a vengeance at that.  There’s a lot of pent-up prose in this mind of mine that needs to be let out at some point!

So, if you still subscribe to 1xO, thank you very much for your patience; if you’ve left, well, then you won’t read this anyway…

Until then, I leave you with a YouTube Video demonstrating how I would like to be signing out in the next 5 years, thank you in advance industry…  The video is actually hilarious, imho.  With the serious and silent pristine white-coated gentleman intently/creepily manipulate a slide of obviously normal cerebellum all at the same time demonstrating the power of multi-touch on a huge monolithic Rads-like light box.  Could you imagine singing out 150 cases propped up like that?? haha!

This announcement was too important to pass up, however:

The Journal of Pathology Informatics (http://www.jpathinformatics.org/) has just gone live with their blog (http://blog.jpathinformatics.org/), now giving you multiple ways to access their content. In addition, you can find JPI articles in PubMed now as well.

A+ Job!

As a typical strapped-for-cash resident, I’m always looking for ways to save a couple bucks on textbooks.  I’ve posted previously about getting in on Amazon Prime with a .edu e-mail address, and, today, LifeHacker has a few more crowd-sourced tips on where to find cheap textbooks.  Some of the sites are familiar players.  Others, however, were new to me, so I thought I’d pass them along! From LH:

• Chegg (http://www.chegg.com)

Chegg offers a nice compromise between buying the overpriced textbooks at your local bookstore and shopping for iffy-quality used books online. At Chegg you don’t purchase your books; you rent them for a semester. The Chegg discount, compared to retail prices, is anywhere from 30%-80% off, with most book rentals falling around the 50% mark. You rent them a semester, a quarter, or a 60-day rental window and then ship them back for free with a prepaid UPS label. You won’t be able to find books at pennies on the dollar like you can by scrounging for used or out-of-print editions elsewhere, but you do get a 30-day “any reason” return policy and free return shipping.

• Amazon (http://www.amazon.com)

No one should be surprised to find out that Amazon has their hand in the textbook business. The book superstore originally offered textbooks mixed in with the rest of their book offerings, both new and discounted through their third-party marketplace. Now Amazon has a dedicated student/textbook section with enhanced textbook search and student-centric features. They even offer a free Amazon Prime membership to anyone with a valid student email address (even if you have an Amazon Prime account already, they will refund you the remaining balance and extend your Prime membership a year into the future). With careful shopping you can find textbooks anywhere from new with a slight discount to heavily-used and extremely discounted.

• AbeBooks (http://www.abebooks.com)

AbeBooks is a massive online marketplace for new, used, and rare books. They have a bustling textbook section with new and used books that average 50% off retail—we found quite a few books in our test searches that crept up in the 75-90% range, however. AbeBooks has a 30-day return policy and an easy-to-use sell-back program—plug in the ISBNs, print off a free mailing label, and ship them back for cash in your pocket.

• Half.com (http://www.half.com)

Half.com, an eBay subsidiary, offers cheap media and books including textbooks. Like a giant used bookstore/record store equivalent of eBay, Half.com is a great place to find cheap textbooks. Low prices aside, one of the strong selling points for textbook shopping at Half.com is their Buying Wizard. Using the Buying Wizard you can search for the books you need and the wizard will search all the deals on Half.com to find you the best combination of prices and combined shipping to get your textbooks faster and cheaper.

• BIGWORDS (http://www.bigwords.com)

BIGWORDS is the textbook website that put seller/shipping optimization on the map with their Multi-Item Price Optimization services. When you search for textbooks at BIGWORDS, they scan dozens of other textbook retailers and resellers to find you the absolute bargain basement prices. When the semester is over you can use the BIGWORDS engine in reverse to sell them all back or donate your textbooks through Better World Books to help fight illiteracy in developing nations.

So I did a quick search for ‘Rosai and Ackerman’s Surgical Pathology’ just to see how Pathology-resident-friendly each service could be, and I got some interesting results.

Chegg: Found, but unavailable at all outlets

Abe: $274 for “International Edition” + $9.99 shipping

Half: $488 new + ??? for shipping

BigWords: $233 for 130 day RENTAL + free shipping

Pretty interesting results, eh?  So it seems that AbeBooks is the clear victor in this case, but “International Version”??  I had never heard of such a thing.  When you mouse over it, it says the following: “The publishers of the international versions do not authorize the sale and distribution of international editions in the United States and Canada, and such the sale and distribution may violate the copyrights and trademarks of such publishers.”  Yikes!  However, there was an additional copy of the North American version for the same price right below it; still, interesting.  Also novel to me is this concept of textbook RENTAL offered by BigWords.  Could be useful for a particular project, paper or case, but to rent it for basically the price of purchasing it?!  Yea, I’m going to pass on that one.

Another tip I’ve used:  I subscribe to the Barnes&Noble and Borders email bacn (aka spam that you kind of want), and they will occasionally send out e-coupons for significant discounts on their products.  During my PGY-1 year, I was able to get Sternberg’s 2-volume set at 40% off using one of these coupons.  So I would suggest signing up for those as well.

Finally, ask your attendings!  I’ve gotten copies of Rosai, Kurman and Kjeldsberg from various attendings over the years for free!  Whether they were getting rid of books they didn’t use any more or they were updating to the most recent edition, I’ve often been the beneficiary of my bosses’ great collective generosity!

Wow.  Just wow.

Thanks to Digital Pathology Blog for the news.  This could be a pretty big shake-up in the industry.  The deal gives Roche’s subsidiary Ventana a 100% share in BioImagene moving forward.  I, personally, have been a fan of the tech coming out of both camps over the years, and I am super-interested to see where this goes…  Too bad that I didn’t hear about this ahead of time so I could have moved some stocks around

Re-Post of Press Release from DPB:

Roche acquires BioImagene, a leading provider of digital pathology laboratory solutions

Acquisition further strengthens Roche’s global leadership in tissue-based cancer diagnostics and research

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced today that it has signed an agreement under which Ventana Medical Systems Inc., a member of the Roche Group, will acquire 100 percent of BioImagene, Inc., a privately held company based in Sunnyvale, California. The purchase price is approximately 100 million US dollars on a debt-free basis. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the coming weeks.

BioImagene is an innovative leader in the field of digital pathology workflow and analysis. Digital pathology is a suite of dynamic, image-based technologies that enable image capture, information management, image analysis and virtual sharing of patients’ tissue samples on glass slides.

“As part of the personalised healthcare approach, pathologists are increasingly involved in generating information with high impact on treatment decisions,” said Daniel O’Day, COO Roche Diagnostics. “The increasing complexity of new tests and technologies creates tremendous need for more sophisticated tools for tissue analysis and diagnosis. BioImagene products will complement and strengthen our current offering in image analysis and information management.”

“With its leadership position in pathology and its global reach, Ventana is the ideal partner for BioImagene,” commented Ajit Singh, CEO of BioImagene, Inc. “Ventana is already a leader in image analysis for breast cancer applications and has a wide range of market-leading diagnostics products used in hospitals and laboratories worldwide. In turn, BioImagene brings to Ventana additional capabilities for scanning and analysing tissue that are not possible in the glass-slide world.”

BioImagene’s products create high-resolution, whole-slide digital images from glass microscope slides. They also provide the software to view, analyze and manage tissue images using a computer, taking pathology beyond traditional microscope applications. In addition, their products improve workflow efficiency in image archiving and retrieval, remote case review, and turnaround time.

“Through this acquisition, Ventana is uniquely positioned to improve laboratory efficiency and help pathologists improve patient care,” said Hany Massarany, President of Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. “Our VIAS Image Analysis System was the first entry into the digital pathology market and is now the leading system for automated image analysis in breast cancer. With BioImagene’s current and future products we will be able to deliver an end-to-end solution from automated staining to comprehensive patient reports.”

Diagnoses?

Case 1:

Case 2:

Case 3:

This is great!!

Bruce Friedman reports over at LabSoft News that this year’s Pathology Informatics Conference will be bigger than ever, smashing the previous record of abstract and e-poster submissions to 60 and 24, respectively!  This is great news, as it seems that Informatics really is a burgeoning field, and people are really starting to take notice of its importance and usefulness in daily practice.

The conference starts September 19, 2010 in Boston and runs for most of the week.  You can get more information about it here.

I really want to go, but am still hoping to get the CAP travel stipend that I applied for……. *cough cough*

I finally took the time to go about registering an official domain!  Only took a year and a half, lol.  I’m just glad the domain was still available!

For the record, however, http://robstak.wordpress.com still works as well.

That is all.  Have a great day!