Pathology has spent the better part of two decades talking about going digital. Whole slide scanners keep getting faster. Viewers keep getting sharper. Storage keeps getting cheaper. Yet according to the College of American Pathologists, only about one in ten U.S. laboratories has actually adopted digital pathology. Many of the labs that did make the jump report something nobody expected: their operations got slower.
The scanner rarely causes that slowdown. The real problem sits one layer deeper, in how the software around the scanner fits together. NovoPath set out to fix that problem at its source by building the digital pathology workflow directly into its laboratory information system.
The Add-On Problem
In most digital pathology setups, the pieces live in separate places. The case lives in the LIS. The slide images live in a standalone image management system. An interface sits between the two and tries to match identifiers from one database to the other. The pathologist reads slides in one window and signs out the report in another.
On paper, that arrangement works. In practice, it creates gaps, and people fill those gaps by hand. Lab staff decide which cases to scan, confirm that a slide set is complete, and chase down failed scans. Pathologists switch between windows and double-check that the image in front of them belongs to the case they think it does. Digital cases and glass cases sit in separate queues with separate rules.
Every one of those handoffs costs time. Some of them carry real risk. When the case and its images live in two systems, keeping them correctly paired depends on an interface and on the people watching it.
One Record for the Case and Its Images
NovoPath takes a different approach. Instead of connecting a separate image system to the LIS, NovoPath brings the digital pathology workflow into the LIS itself. The case, the slides, the report, and the lab’s work all share one record.
That shift sounds simple, but it changes how the entire lab operates. When the LIS owns the case and the images together, nothing needs to be matched across databases after the fact. The system already knows which images belong to which patient, because it never separated them in the first place.
Patient Safety Starts With the Right Slide
The most important benefit of a unified record has nothing to do with speed. It has to do with making sure every diagnosis happens on the right patient.
In NovoPath, the slide barcode, the scan file, and the LIS case match automatically, without anyone retyping an accession number. Every image stays tied to the correct patient record from the moment the slide gets scanned. When a pathologist opens a slide, it opens with that patient’s case, so the diagnosis lands where it belongs.
Completeness matters just as much. Because NovoPath owns the case, it knows every slide the case should include, from the original slides to recuts, levels, and special stains. The system confirms that a case is complete before it ever reaches the pathologist. No one has to discover halfway through a review that a stain never made it to the queue.
What Changes Across the Lab
A single source of truth affects far more than the pathologist’s screen. It reshapes the work of everyone who touches a case.
- Pathologists read and report in the same place, with every slide attached to the right case.
- Lab staff manage digital and glass cases in one shared worklist that follows the same rules.
- Failed or blurry scans become tracked tasks with a clear owner instead of problems someone has to remember.
- Billing teams see digital add-on codes captured right on the case, paired with the primary service, with no second entry.
- Leadership sees digital and glass work in the same numbers, through one set of analytics.
Each of those changes removes a handoff. Taken together, they remove the friction that made so many early digital adopters feel like they had taken a step backward.
The Billing Side of Going Digital
Digital pathology now carries more than 40 Category III add-on codes. That growing list reflects a reality the industry has started to acknowledge: digitization adds work to the laboratory. It should also add revenue, but only if the lab captures those codes correctly.
In a split-system setup, billing staff often reconcile digital codes by hand across two platforms. That process invites missed charges and wasted hours. NovoPath captures digitization add-on codes directly on the case and pairs them with the primary service automatically. The lab gets credit for the digital work it performs, and the billing team stops playing detective.
One Partner Instead of Another Vendor
For many labs, going digital has meant signing another contract with another vendor. That brings another support line, another set of upgrades to coordinate, and another system for IT to maintain. When something breaks between the LIS and the image system, each vendor can point at the other.
NovoPath delivers the laboratory information system, the image workflow, the integrations, and the analytics as one platform from one partner. A single vendor stays accountable for the whole workflow, from specimen intake to the final report and the bill that follows it.
Built on a History of Moving First
NovoPath has a track record of taking the LIS where pathology needs it to go. The company was the first enterprise LIS to move to the cloud, giving laboratories the ability to work from anywhere. Building digital pathology into the LIS follows the same logic. As pathologists move from glass to digital, the system that runs the laboratory has to move with them.
Today more than 300 laboratories use NovoPath across anatomic, molecular, clinical, cytology, and veterinary pathology. Those labs share a common need: a system that treats the case as one unit, no matter how many slides, stains, or images it includes.
Digital Pathology Without the Workflow Headaches
Digital pathology promised faster turnaround, easier collaboration, and more flexibility for pathologists. Those benefits remain within reach. Labs simply need software that supports the whole workflow instead of digitizing the pathologist while leaving the rest of the lab stuck in manual mode.
By building digital pathology into the LIS, NovoPath gives the case one home. Pathologists get confidence that every slide belongs to the right patient. Lab teams get a single worklist. Billing gets clean, captured codes. And the business gets one partner accountable for all of it.
