ASP Health recently attended the AABIP (American Academy for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology) conference held in Charlotte, NC on August 20-24, 2024.
The AABIP is a premier organization for bronchoscopists and interventional pulmonologists in the US and is the accrediting body for interventional pulmonology fellowship programs. The AABIP conference is well attended by clinical thought leaders, practicing physicians, IP fellows, and industry leaders. The 2024 edition of the AABIP conference was the largest conference since it started over 7 years ago.
At this conference, ASP Health proudly showcased its complete solution for the ROSE (Rapid On-Site Evaluation) process which includes: the ROSE Prep™ system, to automatically prepare specimen slides, an automated remote microscope to view the specimen slides remotely, and the ROSE Assist™ software to help cytopathology in the assessment of specimen slides.
ASP Health is developing the ROSE Assist™ software to overcome critical challenges associated with remote assessment of specimen slides. Some of the challenges include the time it takes to identify the nucleated cells on a specimen slide, and the challenge of manually controlling a remote microscope while making an adequacy assessment.
The ROSE Assist™ software overcomes these challenges by utilizing an artificial intelligence (AI-based) algorithm to quickly scan and identify nucleated cells in real-time. This will allow cytopathologists to focus on these cells first before reviewing the entire slide. The AI-based algorithm has been trained and tested on more than 500 specimen slides (500,000 images) to automatically identify the regions containing the nucleated cells on the specimen slide with an accuracy of > 90%.
ROSE is widely known as the “standard of care” for FNA-lung procedures, but a key issue highlighted during a panel discussion at the AABIP conference is the challenge associated with implementing ROSE in the clinical setting. While many large academic medical sites and large pulmonary practices currently have a well-run ROSE practice with good cytopathology support, the steady decrease in the availability of trained cytotechnologists and cytopathologists is creating anxiety among the pulmonologists of these large practices regarding the continued availability of cytology resources for their ROSE assessment. Additionally, in the case of smaller regional medical centers, pulmonologists are often not getting cytology support for their ROSE needs during their FNA procedures or are constrained due to the lack of cytology resources.
We were excited to hear from several clinicians at the AABIP conference that this complete ROSE solution from ASP Health is a “game changer” as it provides for the first time a seamless method for both the large academic medical sites and small regional sites to offer ROSE assessments cost-effectively and efficiently. The addition of the remote microscope and the ROSE Assist™ software will allow the cytopathologist to provide ROSE from their office rather than having to come to the bronchoscopy suite. This complete system will save time for both the pulmonologists and the cytopathologists. Cytopathologists will be able to bill for ROSE and use the time they save for other important and reimbursable activities.
ASP Health is currently commercializing its ROSE Prep™ system and the remote microscope system in the US and Europe.
