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    How AI is Transforming Pathology in Developing Countries | Digital Pathology in Pakistan w/ Talat Zehra

    How AI is Transforming Pathology in Developing Countries | Digital Pathology in Pakistan w/ Talat Zehra

    Introduction

    What role does digital pathology play in addressing global healthcare inequalities? Dr. Zehra’s journey in Pakistan sheds light on this vital question.
    Dr. Talat Zehra, a distinguished pathologist from Karachi, Pakistan, shares her extraordinary journey of embracing digital pathology, highlighting its potential in revolutionizing healthcare in under-researched regions. This article delves into her pioneering work, overcoming infrastructural challenges, and setting new standards in pathology practice.

    Early Struggles and Transition

    Initially practicing traditional histopathology, Dr. Zehra faced challenges heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Her innovative spirit led her to join the Digital Pathology Association in early 2020, where she learned about whole slide imaging (WSI), computational pathology, and deep learning models. This marked the beginning of her digital transition, fueled by a nationwide survey to raise digital pathology awareness among Pakistani pathologists.

    Adopting Digital Pathology

    Dr. Zehra began her digital journey with a basic microscope equipped with an inbuilt camera, taking static images for telepathology and educational purposes. Despite lacking a scanner, she persisted in exploring AI applications on these images. Collaborating with vendors like Aiforia, she learned to annotate images and apply algorithms, leading to three published projects in peer-reviewed journals.

    Overcoming Equipment Limitations

    Faced with the absence of a scanner, Dr. Zehra adapted by utilizing digital images for AI analysis. She worked with various software, including Aiforia and Mindpeak, to apply AI on digital images for breast cancer quantification studies, demonstrating the feasibility of digital pathology in low-resource settings.

    Educational Initiatives

    Dr. Zehra emphasized education in digital pathology, using her resources for teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Her work has played a crucial role in bridging the gap between traditional and digital methods in Pakistan’s pathology education.

    Innovations in Research

    Her research projects, focused on applying AI to pathology, have set new benchmarks in the field. Dr. Zehra has conducted over ten projects using digital images and AI, with a majority published, showcasing the practical application of digital pathology in developing countries.

    Global Healthcare Impact

    Dr. Zehra’s endeavors extend beyond national borders, influencing global healthcare practices. She discusses the challenges of pathology in low-resource settings and how digital pathology can mitigate these issues, such as improving diagnosis speed and accuracy, facilitating remote consultations, and enhancing educational resources.

    Future Perspectives

    Despite her achievements, Dr. Zehra acknowledges ongoing challenges in fully integrating digital pathology. She envisions a future where digital tools are more widely accepted and utilized, helping to overcome existing healthcare disparities, especially in developing countries like Pakistan.

    Conclusion

    Dr. Talat Zehra’s journey in digital pathology is a testament to the transformative power of technology and innovation in healthcare. Her work not only advances pathology practices in Pakistan but also inspires a global shift towards more efficient and accessible healthcare solutions.

    This episodes resources

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    transcript

    Aleks: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, my digital pathology trailblazers. Today, I have a special guest from Pakistan, Dr. Talat Zehra. She is one of the finalists of the pathology power list this year. She also won the pathology vision travel awards in 2021. And recently she published paper with Dr. Anil Parwani about digital pathology in under researched areas.

    Welcome to the podcast, talat. How are you doing today?

    Talat: I’m doing well. How are you?

    Aleks: I’m great. And I’m so happy that you joined me today and we always start with the guests. So tell me about you.

    Talat: I’m Dr. Talat Zehra. I am an assistant professor at Chinnasan Medical University, Karachi, Pakistan. So I’m basically a medical doctor.

    And I did my fellowship in histopathology from college of physician and surgeons Pakistan. As far as my digital pathology background is concerned, in 2019, early 2019, when I passed my fellowship exam, I started my lab [00:01:00] practice in a lab in the evening time, along with my job in the university, which I was doing since 2016.

    But at the start of 2020 when the covid transformed into pandemic. And we learn new norms of life, obviously, due to this pandemic, many physical activities got stuck. My university got stopped and I started teaching virtually. But one thing I was missing, that was my pathology learning. I left my job, my private job, which I was doing, because I did not want unnecessary exposure, so I left the job.

    It was a time when I started missing that, how, what are the tools through which I can continue my pathology journey as well. At that time, I joined Digital Pathology Association, DPA, in early 2020 in the organization. I also read different papers and tools I came to know through which we can work virtually even without going to the lab.

    So these things were really [00:02:00] amazing and I was really amazed by them, how new digital tools, I came to know about the whole slide imaging, computational pathology, deep learning model. So I, first I conducted a survey, a nationwide survey among the pathologists working in Pakistan to highlight the digital pathology and create.

    Awareness among the pathologists working in Pakistan. This was the first survey. It was also published in one of the blogs of the DPA as well as in the form of original article as well in a peer reviewed journal.

    Aleks: And we can link to all the papers that we’re mentioning in the show notes. So it’s all going to be there for everyone who wants to have a look at the original source of information.

    Talat: Thank you. After learning these tools I had the bottleneck actually that I, we had not the scanner in our vicinity. So when I resumed my duty to my university in the mid of 2020, so I had a microscope which had a camera and it was just an inbuilt camera and it was connected with a screen.

    So I [00:03:00] started my journey with this available tools. I used to take images, static images. Initially, I used to make a movie of that entire image and I used to send it to my colleagues for second opinion, telepathology. I used to do it and I and was really amazing for me, I use it for the education, both for the undergraduate students of medicine as well as postgraduate students.

    So I was enjoying it, but one thing was missing, that was the use of AI or the deep learning model on these static images. So I approach many software or vendors internationally, but when they came to know that I don’t have a scanner, so they refused me because they don’t know. They had no idea that AI can be applied on digital images.

    But I did not lost hope. I kept contacting different vendors and one day I found a vendor, Aiforia, despite didn’t know that I don’t have a scanner, I don’t have the whole slide images. They gave me their demo version for about one and a half months. And to me, it was a really exciting moment because [00:04:00] I really wanted to use the AI tools, how they work on it on the digital images or the whole slide images.

    I’m really thankful to Dr. Darshan Kumar, who was the customer success manager of Aiforia. Initially I had no knowledge how to annotate the image, how to make algorithms, apply algorithms, how to test and train. I was completely zero, but that gentleman helped me out and he taught me how to do, how to annotate perfectly, how to apply an algorithm and test and train the images.

    So I did three projects in the, in that one and a half month period, or all these projects are now published in the peer review journals along with this AI learning. kept on writing different platforms, international platforms, highlighting the issues of delayed adoption of digital pathology in developing part of the world in 2021, when there was a path vision, which is an annual conference of BPA.

    First time probably they put an award, a travel award for develop, for individual from developing [00:05:00] country. I just filled up form, it was written that the award will be given to those who have knowledge of digital pathology, computational pathology, it will be given on the base of the knowledge of the individual.

    So I just filled up form keeping in mind that it’s a single award for a, for the entire developing world. So I might get, or may not. So I forgot after some beating the application, I knew that I won’t get, but to me, it was really a surprising event thing when I got an email and I came to know that I am being, I’m the one who selected.

    Though in 2021, I could not go to U. S. at that time because of some COVID restrictions and visa issues, but I’m highly thankful to Dr. Anil Parwani, who brought my award all the way from U. S. to Karachi vivage, and he gave me that award in Karachi. At a session organized by College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan in his honor, he gave a fabulous talk there and it was the first talk about digital [00:06:00] pathology and computational pathology in Pakistan, which was both attended.

    Physically as well as virtually all over the country and the response was high, was highly appreciated. So I went to Path Vision 2022 actually. So and I received the award once again, the same award and I got the travel grant as well. So actually, basically the when I received, when I got when I was selected for this award, this was a really motivation for me.

    Then if you can work hard and if you are sincere in your efforts. You can get the results. So no need to be disheartened that you don’t have a scanner. So I kept working. I did not stop my journey after that. I worked with the, after working with Aiforia mindpeak another AI software, they gave me their demo version.

    And on simple digital images, we worked on quantification of ERPR and KI 67. After that I worked with various computational pathologist group, did different projects similarly, after that, I did [00:07:00] I explored the open source software of deep learning, which are also available. I worked with them and the results were really appreciating.

    And currently till date, I have done more than 10 projects. All the projects were done on digital images we applied AI and majority are published now. So currently my focus is basically at how we can adopt digital pathology and computational pathology in resource limited setup. Developing world contains the bulk of world population.

    So bulk of world disease is there, but less acute with diagnostic modalities, particularly the novel ones. So we need to work on these areas. So that we can resolve our issues related to delayed adoption.

    Aleks: Someone, I want to ask a quick question here because I want to dive deep into this, but to take a step back, you use the phrase low resource country or low resource setting and it’s used all over.

    What does it mean? What does it mean at a low [00:08:00] resource setting? And by that I’m asking, how does your daily pathology job look? Like you said, you were working at the university and having a private practice. Can you basically describe how does a career of a pathologist in Pakistan look?

    Talat: Yeah, sure. By a low resource setting means in developing part of the world, most of the countries, the health structure is not very good in terms of infrastructure.

    In terms of logistic, in terms of manpower, we are deprived of number of healthcare professionals, both pathologists as well as the technol, technical staff. So we are in a resource limited setup. We have bulk of diseases actually, but less acute with the diagnostic modalities. Or particularly the novel ones, they are very unfortunately, in developed part in developing part of the world, as the pathology practice is concerned in Pakistan, Pakistan is the fifth most populated country of the world.

    Population is more than [00:09:00] 220 million people. So if we talk about the number of cancer cases, which are diagnosed every year, according to WHO, there 200, 000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed every year in Pakistan. And this incidence is alarmingly increasing around the globe. Cancer. Cases are on the rise, but if we talk about the number of pathologists or the pathologists who are concerned with the diagnosis of cancer.

    Their number is on declining trend around the globe and the situation is more grave in our part of the world because there is a fast trend of going abroad by skillful person who are working in the, in, in the developing world to get the good facilities of life. It’s a very common trend.

    Aleks: I am an example.

    I came, I’m from Poland and I work and live in the U. S. Yeah. When you look at the influential people in the digital pathology world, many of them do not come from the U. S. even though they practice in the U. S., so totally can relate to that.

    Talat: So the [00:10:00] situation becomes more grave, actually. So similarly, if you talk about the labs, the big labs who are equipped with good facility, they have good histopathology set up along with IHC facility, immunochemistry.

    And some of the labs have the molecular facility. These labs are also very smaller in number, and you can count in your fingers and most of these big labs are situated in big country, big cities of the country. against the bulk of the population who live in the rural areas. At times, the patient, specimen, their blood, and their slides, they have to travel a lot in search or finding their final diagnosis.

    And in this long journey, at times, the specimen may be lost or damaged. So all these things leads to increased morbidity and mortality of precious lives, actually, which could have been saved if diagnosed timely. So to me, digital pathology appears as a ray of hope in solving many [00:11:00] of these issues.

    Aleks: So another question, we have big labs that have access to molecular, to IHC and can basically provide the final diagnosis, but they are only in the big cities.

    Yeah. And do you have histology in the small labs or do you need to send the sample to the centralized lab? How? Does this journey of a sample look in Pakistan?

    Talat: As I mentioned earlier, most of the big labs are situated in the big cities of the country. Smaller labs usually give the facility of H& E only or the histology examination.

    Then they refer it to the bigger lab or sometimes the patient go and take the sample and directly go to the bigger lab. So they just do a wide unnecessary issue. . This is an issue and as you said that there is less. This is a poor health facility system present in most of the developing part of the world.

    So these issues are still not uncommon in our part of the world.

    Aleks: So you say [00:12:00] you are working with a microscope camera, and most of your project has been done on this type of of your images. What’s your microscope, what’s your camera, and how many of the microscopes are equipped with a camera in Pakistan?

    Talat: Currently, most of the microscopes are equipped with a camera. Currently, most of the modern microscopes, they give the facility of camera. As I told you that there is shortage of pathologists, so we do telepathology through these camera connect. We take the images from the region of interest. Take the photograph through, even through the good smartphone help us in the work.

    Yeah. So these are the cheaper solutions which can help, but obviously if we have a small scanner facility in some of the areas that can make a difference.

    Aleks: So that takes me to my next question, which is a little bit of like a devil advocate question. And I’m telling, I’m going to tell you why.

    Do you really need this scanner? [00:13:00] How is it going to help? And why am I asking that? And you already mentioned a couple of components. So I always give this example. Okay. The only lower resource setting that I visited was Ethiopia and Africa during a scholarship that I had and I witnessed their pathology lab.

    I don’t think they had access to molecular, maybe they did, but basically in Africa in general, before telephone cables were installed, the world already moved to smartphones. So they basically skipped this whole thing, this part of technology development. They could enter in the next step. So everybody has a smartphone.

    I don’t know what’s the situation in Pakistan. If you guys are users of smartphones, but it looks like you at least have a smartphone.

    Talat: Yeah, a majority of the health professionals have a smartphone. You wanted to sell this, the basic infrastructure is still weak, and you are talking about the scanner. Yeah, we have the issues.

    We have already the pre existing issues, which we [00:14:00] need to solve. But beside this, we need to adopt the novel tools as well. Why I emphasize is that by adopting these novel tools, we can resolve our pre existing issues, actually. For example, I don’t talk that we should have a high tech scanner. I talk about the low slide scanner, smaller scanner, or digital microscope.

    We don’t need big logistics, actually. We have issue of reduced declining number of pathologists. As I mentioned earlier, the number of pathologists in Pakistan are not more than 500. Okay. Against the bulk of population, which is 220 million people, more than 220 million people. So as I mentioned earlier, the number of cancer cases is on the rise around the globe, transmission is more grave in our part of the world because we are, we had the bulk of world population.

    So in histopathology particularly and the cancer cases, we need second and third opinion. We need opinion from the subject specialist. So if we had that facility [00:15:00] of a scanner or the low slide scanner, we can send the images. to other concerned pathologists around the world on a single click. It will speed the diagnosis of the patient and also will reduce the miseries of the patient.

    We had to send the slides have to travel from one place to another so that a pathologist can see, sometimes you say you, I used to send a digital image to my senior colleague, but she says no. I’m not satisfied you, I want to see the whole image of your place too, because histopathology is very important field and we are dealing with the lives of the patient.

    So by adopting the novel tool, at least we can reduce or we can minimize our own issues, which we can resolve our already existing issues. Which are already present in our part of the world. Similarly, once your data is digitized, so you have residents working in different part of the country, they don’t get the equal facilities of learning.

    Once you have a centralized data, you can share it to every resident. [00:16:00] So in this way, you can provide equal opportunities of learning for all the residents working in the country, irrespective of their geographical status. Similarly, this is an era of precision medicine. The disease behaves differently from region to region.

    Once your data is digitized, you can make your own disease model, disease trend, and predict the disease outcome according to your own demographic region, in this way opening the door of precision medicine. So that’s why I emphasize that we need to adopt these tools to solve our pre existing issues actually.

    Though we need to resolve them as well, obviously, but by adopting these tools can help actually.

    Aleks: See, yeah, I hear what you’re saying. So basically, because my argument was like, okay, you’re a pathologist, you’re seeking consultation with another pathologist, you know what to take the pictures of. Which regions are diagnostic, where you have the problem and you just send them static images.

    But the one thing that you said that you need to have a database representative of [00:17:00] your own demographic, that’s something that probably will require whole slide images. Even if you don’t necessarily need to use it routinely for telepathology, telemedicine, which you’re already doing with your microscope cameras, right?

    Talat: Yeah, we need to start things gradually. You don’t need to jump on the primary diagnosis. We need to start working on the more common disease, for example, breast cancer. The breast cancer is the most common cancer in the world. Also the most common cancer in the women in Pakistan as well. So we should have our own data because it’s the most common tumor.

    I don’t want that we should have digitized data for every disease. But for the common diseases which needs treatment and the treatment can be different from region to other region. From one region to another region of the world. So at least for the common diseases. We can make our own data, digitized.

    Aleks: So question, did you try any already developed algorithms on other populations [00:18:00] applied to your images or whole slide images?

    Talat: Yeah I took the demo version from Mindpeak and we already cover a commercially available software and I use it on the data of my population, Pakistani population. Similarly, I used deep life and open source software. And it’s results were really amazing it was very pathologist friendly software.

    There’s so many tools which can help the pathologist to make things more accurate.

    Aleks: I checked this one as well. The deep life. It’s so easy. You just drag and drop your image and you don’t even have to have host like images. You can just have a screenshot.

    Talat: Yeah. I used to take images at 10x and I used to upload it. And then I annotated the region of interest, sometimes exclude the region where I don’t need. And we did a large validation study on KI 67 quantification in breast cancer patients. We took a result from pathologists working in developing part of the world. 10 pathologists took part in that study and the result of this study were [00:19:00] really amazing.

    And now it’s in the process of publication. So we have used basically AI based software for validation study in our part of the world.

    Aleks: So do you routinely use it or do you have the option to now start using it after you publish the data or after your validation’s done?

    Talat: It’ll take time. I believe that we need more validation study or more scale. When you are using digital images, obviously the size of that image is very small as compared to the whole slide. All the projects which I have done yet, that was on digital image. But now, by the grace of almighty, now we have started working on whole slide images after doing lots of work on Digital images, I’m currently, I’m doing two projects on whole slide, one of them is on breast and the other one I did on cutaneous lesiminosis, a skin biopsy, a skin disease and endemic disease of developing part of the world.

    I did this project and it’s also in the process of publication.

    Aleks: Amazing. So how much proof or how much [00:20:00] validation do you need to start deploying it? And which regulatory framework are you constrained by? Like when would you be confident or allowed to start using what you’ve been developing for the last several years that you’ve been working on digital pathology?

    Talat: Yeah. My projects are, most of the projects are the pilot study, the proof of concept studies. Obviously, large studies are still needed. As far as AI is concerned, AI is basically a pathologist assisted tool. So it should be an assisted tool, not, it should not replace the pathologist’s decision. In even in developed part of the world.

    There is not 100 percent adoption, digital adoption was required, right? So AI tools are still not perfect. Pathologists are scared of the black box that who is going to control the momentum. It is the pathologist who is signing out the report or the one who is making the tools. So I believe that there is a lot of still a lot of debate before applying AI tools in [00:21:00] full fledged in the clinical side, but obviously there are certain tools like AI is way better than pathologists in terms of quantification, particularly, When you talk about Ki67 quantification, particularly, there is too much, it’s a subject of too much subjective error variability.

    So AI tools can be helpful in this setup. It can reduce the subjective variability. These tools are more fast, accurate, and reproducible. But I believe there’s still things will take time or particularly in developing part of the world, we need more large validation studies before we implement for the clinical practice.

    So it’s just the start of journey. I cannot say where it will end and we have been, we will switch to for a, for clinical practice.

    Aleks: But what would be the path? Who is initiating this? Is it like, can the private hospital initiate it? Is there an. Agency similar to the FDA in the U. S. where you file some tools or.

    Talat: In Pakistan, we have a regulatory authority. [00:22:00] It’s known as DRAP. Drug Regulatory Authority, so it basically passed the rules, but before going applying the AI, what I personally believe, we need to be digitized first. We need to digitize our lab, not the entire lab, start from the big cities and then we place small scanner in the remote areas so that I see my friends sitting in the big city and they are giving consultation.

    to a person who is sitting in a remote area, CBC report, a blood report, peripheral failure report, from microscope cameras, initially I personally believe we don’t need to jump to the, to apply AI in clinical practice. We first need to resolve our pre existing issues, which is the reduced number of pathologists in developing part of the world.

    Us, we don’t need to have big scanners or high tech scanner. Initially, we need to have a small scanner. Which we can use it for telepathology. Once this issue is a big issue this issue is resolved and we started [00:23:00] learning how to use the digital images. Then we can apply the AI as well. So it’s a step by step process.

    We cannot jump all together on AI tools, but we need to learn it, obviously.

    Aleks: So you say telepathology is the priority and the number of pathologists in Pakistan that will come into training is higher priority. So regarding the pathologist education, how does that work in Pakistan and what resources do you have available?

    Do you have any plan how to encourage more people to become pathologists?

    Talat: Yeah, basically, there is a regularity institution for postgraduate education in Pakistan, known as College of Physician and Surgeon Pakistan, CPSP, and it gives fellowship. Awards to the pathologist who passed the exam. I myself did a fellowship exam.

    I myself did the training and then passed the fellowship exam. There is a systematic way through which the candidate passed through the exam. But obviously, [00:24:00] digital tools are still not very commonly used. In our part of the world, or particularly in Pakistan, but now people are aware of it.

    They want to implement, they want to use it. But most of the time, the prices of scanners are still beyond the budget of many low resource organizations. So financial constraint is biggest hurdle. I believe the role of technology vendor is crucial.

    Aleks: Okay. Is there anything you used? with your smartphone or any way that you guys are doing telepathology with a smartphone?

    Talat: Yeah we use the camera connected microscope. I really enjoy. I used to make the whole movie of the image and I send it to my friend to take a second opinion. And I use it basically mainly for education both undergraduates and postgraduate students. And also I love to apply AI on it. I am a passionate learner of digital and computational.

    Pathology. So it’s my passion. And I used to [00:25:00] do lots of computational pathology. I used to do lots of annotation and I learned try to learn how to annotate from Aiforia and other people as well. So I basically use the images for computational pathology.

    Aleks: But you’re saying that most of your colleagues don’t, they only use it for telepathology?

    Talat: Yeah. They’re too much over and they don’t have time actually. Pathologists are reduced in number, as I told you earlier.

    Aleks: Yeah, you have 500 pathologists for your country. I have 500 pathologists in Poland, which is a country of 35 million people.

    Talat: Yeah. Let me just check. Yeah, it’s a small country of Europe.

    Aleks: So I have the same, and actually now the official number for 2021 is 37. 7 million people. Compared to exactly Pakistan which is 231. 4 million. And we have the same number of pathologists. And I thought that we [00:26:00] have a few pathologists, you guys have less, we have the same number, but you have a lot more population to serve with your pathology services.

    So I think this is, everybody hears that. And it’s based at the level of a slogan or of a like, nice thing to say, we have to help, or we have to implement things in lower resource countries. But unless you realize what is the scale of this problem and to me, this is a personal connection.

    I’m from Poland and I thought we have a few pathologists and you don’t, where you have a country that big population in the world that has the same number of pathologists so.

    Talat: The solution may be good more in in some African countries, maybe.

    Aleks: Yes, maybe we would’ve to, I would’ve to invite somebody from there.

    Talat: Or country countries who are well affected. The situation can be more grave.

    Aleks: Let me tell you the experience that I had in Ethiopia and like you say. You have to [00:27:00] go approach the problem step wise and you’re from there, you’re working there so you know what steps should be taken. The experience I had or the thing I saw in Ethiopia, it was in Addis Ababa.

    There was some international grant, I think, or European grant that equipped the whole lab with the newest molecular techniques. I think it was different things, but one of them were PCR cyclers. And this whole lab was fantastically equipped. They had the person who graduated from a PhD program in Germany.

    And this whole lab was under those anti dust covers. Because the hospital was not able to purchase the reagents to use those machines. So basically like a lot of money and a lot of equipment just collecting dust because there were no resources to actually use this equipment, which can, as I was [00:28:00] thinking about it, okay, what would be the restriction, the bottleneck there, maybe internet connection.

    Maybe some kind of storage. Technology glitches.

    Talat: Technology glitches, we need to create technical stuff. So that’s why I always emphasize that we need to start with on a small scale, but make the things mature and then implement on a larger scale. You don’t need to jump on the higher scale, but we cannot handle it.

    So start small steps and then start your journey.

    Aleks: Definitely. And to know the steps, you need to know both sides of the story. Insider knowledge of a person working there and also the knowledge of, okay, what’s out there? What is this AI? How can you implement? Where would it fit?

    Which is what you basically are doing in your research time, or I don’t want to say spare time, but it’s not the time.

    Talat: Yeah, I’m basically a researcher, actually. Yeah, I’m basically now a researcher. I’ve switched my field. From clinical pathology to computational pathology. I am a researcher now.[00:29:00]

    Aleks: Amazing. Amazing. And so when you visited the U. S. Was this your first time in the U. S.?

    Yeah, it was my first visit.

    How was your trip? You went to the conference, so obviously you experienced the conference. Did you do anything else? What were your impressions? What did you get to see, visit and learn?

    And just tell me. How did you feel after that trip?

    Talat: Yeah, my experience was amazing. I unfortunately lived there for the conference days only and then I left to my country. But I wrote a blog as well. After coming back to Pakistan, I wrote it that Path Vision 2022 from the lens of a computational pathologist is fascinating.

    Aleks: I’m going to find the blog and link in the description as well. I think it’s fascinating. There is, let’s say. Let’s call it at the U. S. The research and development is pretty advanced and then yeah, people learn about it and they take it to the places where they are and they like take bits and pieces and[00:30:00] it grows like a network with little branches outside of this hub where this whole thing is happening.

    And like in, in your case, a lot of work on static images, which here, like when you talk about static images, Oh, it’s really actually thing of the past now it’s whole slide images. And not necessarily because there are applications of everything. And I love how it’s spreading. It’s spreading with people who want to spread it like you, who are passionate about things that, you might not see it immediately being implemented everywhere in your country.

    But it doesn’t stop you from digging deeper, checking it out, trying it on the things that you can try it on. So this is amazing. Thank you so much for your work.

    Thank you.

    I’m going to link to every thing we mentioned to all the publications and the blog posts in the show notes. I Went through this through before our episode, and it was really fascinating.

    And thank you so much for joining me.

    Talat: Thank you very much same here, and I’m [00:31:00] grateful to you that you invited me and I got the opportunity to share my views regarding, discuss the issues related to, delayed adoptions of digital pathology in our part of the world and how these novel tools actually can help to resolve many of our pre existing issues.

    So thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. It was nice meeting you. Thank you.

    Aleks: Amazing meeting you and have a great day.