The SmartScope | 2023

Designer: Lauren Goyette, Andy Kotz, Alex Carney, Marjorie MacDonald, Ziray Hao, Atharv Agashe, Elizabeth Frey, Victor Muturi, Lauren Kidman, Daniel Lubliner, Annie Qiu, Emily Chen, Ulgen Yildrim, Alejandro Lopez, Joy Miao, and Kelly Song, Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab, Hanover, New Jersey, USA
Manufacturer: PixCell, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA

Right now, when a cancer patient gets a biopsy, a doctor looks at the tissue on a slide under a microscope. This process, entirely analogue, is called histopathology – the design team calls it Pathology 1.0. Some hospitals have started digitizing the tissue slides, to be examined on computer monitors. This is what the designers call Pathology 2.0. Finally, recent years have seen the development of a torrent of artificial intelligence algorithms, that can extract useful information from the digital images of the tissue. This is what they call Pathology 3.0.

None of these exciting developments are used to serve patients. Because analyzing tissue slides on a computer monitor is cumbersome. The interface is not efficient; studies show that doing this task on a computer monitor delays patient care, adding over 18 hours to the pathologist’s work week. A pathologist is trained, for over 10,000 hours, to use a medical microscope efficiently. Also, it is not simply user preference; the medical microscope has been iterated over 200 years, to do this one task exceedingly well. That’s not true of computer screens.

Pathology is a multi-billion dollar industry, stuck in an analog world, due to poor design. The designer team solution: Good design can enable the industry to jump two stages ahead, to Pathology 3.0. Just like a smartwatch marries the design of a wristwatch with the brains of a computer, to do things neither could do alone, the SmartScope marries the design of a medical microscope with the brains of a computer. Thereby, it lets these doctors step into the digital world. It enables powerful AI algorithms, developed in research labs, to finally be tested and deployed in the field, to serve patients. It delivers Pathology 2.0 and enables Pathology 3.0. It uses good design to help cure cancer.