The digital–physical divide for pathology research
Isaac S. Kohane, Susanne E. Churchill, Amelia L.M. Tan, Margaret E. Vella, Cassandra L. Perry · The Lancet Digital Health · 2023
In 2018 we launched the Network of Enigmatic Exceptional Responders, a patient-directed network to study individuals who had an exceptional response to cancer treatment.1 Recruitment, which began in late 2018 and is ongoing, was carried out though a national public radio story and social media posts, after which participants underwent genomic, T-cell-receptor, and microbiome analysis and completed questionnaires, and their health records were obtained from their respective institutions. However, when we attempted to obtain images of microscopic and routinely stained tissue, tissue sampled from excised tumours, or biopsy samples from tumours, many of our requests were unfulfilled—including more than 90% of our requests for tumour samples.