Digital pathology was supposed to make life easier for pathologists. Scan the glass, view the slide on a screen, sign out from anywhere. In practice, many labs found something messier. They bought a scanner, added an image viewer, set up an archive, and then tried to connect all of it to a laboratory information system (LIS) that was never designed for images in the first place.
The result is a lab that has invested heavily in digital but still works in fragments. Pathologists toggle between systems, histotechs match slides to cases by hand, and IT teams spend their days maintaining integrations that break at the worst possible moment. NovoPath takes a different approach by building the digital pathology workflow directly into the LIS itself.
The Real Problem With Digital Pathology Today
Adoption of digital pathology is still early. The College of American Pathologists estimates that roughly one in 10 U.S. laboratories has adopted it. Many of the labs still on the sidelines aren’t skeptical of the technology. They’re skeptical of the workflow.
A typical “digital” setup asks a pathologist to open the case in the LIS, launch a separate viewer, find the right images, review them, then jump back to the LIS to write and sign the report. Each handoff adds clicks, delays, and room for error. When the case and its images live in two different systems, someone or something has to match them correctly every single time.
That matching problem is more than an inconvenience. It’s a patient safety issue. A slide attached to the wrong case, or a case that reaches the pathologist before all its slides are scanned, can lead to delayed or incorrect diagnoses.
One Record for the Case and Its Images
NovoPath’s core idea is simple: the case needs one home. Instead of matching a case in the LIS with images stored somewhere else, NovoPath keeps the case and its images on a single record. Every slide stays tied to its case from the start.
This structure lets the LIS do something a bolted-on integration can’t do well. It confirms that a case is complete before it lands on a pathologist’s worklist. If slides are missing or still in the scanning queue, the system knows. Pathologists stop opening cases only to discover they can’t finish them yet.
For lab directors, this single source of truth also simplifies quality control, auditing, and reporting. There’s no reconciling two databases to figure out what happened with a case.
Working With the Viewer a Lab Already Uses
Many labs have already made big investments in scanners and image management software. Ripping that out to adopt a new LIS isn’t realistic. NovoPath accounts for this with a platform-agnostic design.
The LIS connects to whatever viewer a lab already uses, and it integrates with any instrument or third-party system that supports LIS integration. NovoPath has integrated with more than six whole slide imaging partners and has a long history of this kind of work, including an early bidirectional integration with Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution.
For labs that don’t have a viewer yet, NovoPath also offers a built-in viewer for non-diagnostic use. That gives teams a way to look at images for review, education, or case preparation without buying another tool on day one.
What Changes for Pathologists
The biggest shift shows up at the pathologist’s desk. Instead of hopping between six different systems, a pathologist can open a case, view the slides, and complete the report in one connected workflow. That sounds small, but it adds up quickly over dozens of cases a day.
Digital access also changes where and how pathologists work. With slides available digitally inside the LIS, labs can route critical cases to the right subspecialist at the right time, regardless of where that pathologist sits. Remote sign-out, second opinions, and workload balancing across sites all become far more practical.
NovoPath’s broader feature set supports this flow. The platform handles case accessioning, automated case distribution, digital sign-out, hands-free grossing through voice dictation, and fully customizable reports. When those functions already live in the same system as the images, pathologists spend less time managing software and more time making diagnoses.
What Changes for the Lab and the Business
Histology and lab operations teams feel the difference too. Fewer manual steps mean fewer chances for a slide to go missing or get mislabeled. Archive rooms stop filling up with glass that nobody can find, because digital archiving works when the LIS can actually locate what’s stored.
On the business side, a single platform reduces the number of vendors, contracts, and interfaces a lab has to maintain. Integrations with EMRs, reference labs, and outside systems run through one LIS rather than a patchwork of connectors. NovoPath supports interfacing with over 150 EMRs, which matters for labs that serve many referring providers.
Reliability is part of the equation as well. NovoPath runs on cloud infrastructure with 99.9% uptime. That’s important for any lab, but especially for digital labs where a system outage can stall every case in the queue.
Built for Many Pathology Specialties
Digital pathology doesn’t look the same in every lab. An anatomic pathology practice has different needs than a veterinary lab or a hematopathology group. NovoPath’s LIS serves anatomic, molecular, veterinary, and hematopathology labs, and it’s fully configurable to match each lab’s workflows rather than forcing the lab to adapt to the software.
That flexibility helps labs move to digital at their own pace. Some start by digitizing a single subspecialty or case type. Others go all in from the beginning. In either case, the LIS grows with the lab instead of becoming a bottleneck.
A Track Record of Moving Pathology Forward
NovoPath brings more than 30 years of experience in pathology to this work. The company was the first enterprise LIS to move to the cloud, and it has now become the first to build digital pathology into the system that runs the laboratory.
Both moves follow the same logic. As pathologists shift from glass to digital, the core system running the lab has to move with them. Treating digital pathology as an add-on leaves labs with the same fragmented workflow they were trying to escape.
Making Digital Pathology Feel Digital
The promise of digital pathology was never about scanners or screens alone. It was about faster turnaround, fewer errors, better collaboration, and pathologists spending their time on diagnosis instead of administration. Those benefits only show up when the workflow itself is unified.
By keeping every case and its images on one record, connecting to the tools labs already own, and verifying cases are complete before they reach the pathologist, NovoPath turns digital pathology from a stack of separate tools into a single workflow. For labs weighing the move to digital, or labs that went digital and still feel stuck, that shift could make all the difference.
