Lay summary
Personalised cancer care will optimise patient outcomes and improve survival. The images that are assessed as part of the pathological analysis are highly complex and data-rich and rely on a pathologist to subjectively review glass slides on a light microscope. As pathology laboratories move to a digital workflow, a computational approach is becoming feasible. This will support pathologists to provide an accurate, standardised and quantified analysis for clinicians and patients to inform personalised therapy decisions, and reduce diagnostic errors. This is the field of computer assisted diagnosis/computational pathology. Pathologists with expertise in this area will be essential to proactively manage the increasing cancer cases and diminishing pathologist numbers in Aotearoa New Zealand. I am a senior pathologist with a passionate interest in translating technology for cancer diagnostics. This award would allow dedicated time to develop national/international relationships and build on grant work that I have already undertaken in computational pathology.