Department of Pathology Alumni Newsletter, Issue 9

Message from Dr. Jay Debnath:

Dear Alumni and Friends,

As the summer winds down, I hope you and your families, colleagues, and friends continue to stay safe during this pandemic. At UCSF, we continue to navigate the COVID-19 crisis at many levels, including the operational and financial challenges that it has posed and continues to pose on the Department, Medical Center and the University as a whole. I am truly blown away by the creativity, dedication and resilience of everyone in our Department throughout 2020. We are blessed with an exceptionally talented and dedicated group of pathologists, scientists, learners, and staff.

A major highlight since the beginning of the pandemic has been the widespread implementation of digital pathology at UCSF, which allows us to prospectively scan all clinical slides, thereby enabling clinical sign out from any location, providing new opportunities for learning, consultation and review of cases among colleagues, and ultimately, providing a robust foundation for computational pathology. This rapid clinical adoption of a digital workflow in response to COVID-19 was made possible through years of hard work, perseverance and creative fundraising and problem-solving by a large team of faculty and staff across the Department and UCSF Health, which was led by Dr. Zoltan Lasik (Director of Digital Pathology), Sarah Bowman (Manager of Digital Pathology), and Dr. Grace Kim (Vice Chair for Clinical Services).