Dr. Mario Alexander Melo Uribe, specialist in Surgical Anatomical Pathology National Cancer Institute (Colombia)

Please briefly describe who you are and what’s your role?

I am Dr. Mario Melo, a specialist in Surgical Anatomical Pathology, since 2010 and I have been dedicated to Oncological Pathology for 6 years now, working at the National Cancer Institute of Colombia, a Colombian government entity, a national benchmark in the treatment of cancer patients.

How long have you been using ExpertPath and ImmunoQuery?

I came across the solutions two years ago, when interacting with pathologists from other countries through social networks, and I realized that these colleagues used them to solve their daily problems in their professional practice and also utilized them as a reliable and accurate consultation tool. After this, I wanted to have access to the platforms, to explore their content and request a trial ... Elsevier, kindly contacted me, and I began to use them to solve doubts, to study my cases, and as a learning method.

Being familiar with the use and value of ExpertPath and ImmunoQuery, how do you think these types of resources can help healthcare professionals at this moment marked by the pandemic?

The pandemic has taught us the value of social and professional interaction, that factor inherent in our human condition, and gives us the opportunity to increase the use of virtual platforms to interact with our peers. It is there, that platforms such as ExpertPath and ImmunoQuery emerge as a virtual opportunity to access knowledge and as an opportunity to solve daily concerns, which require fast, accurate, and reliable responses, within the framework of surgical pathology, which is increasingly broad; with enormous amounts of information and that assimilating it all is a challenge, even for experts.

With more than 12 months passed, how has this health crisis affected your professional work in the field of Pathology?

The pandemic in our country reduced the surgical specimens resulting from surgeries. People were confined and did not go to their consultations for fear of being infected or because the health system had to avoid non-urgent procedures, which resulted in fewer specimens in our Pathology rooms. But curiously, a year later we are experiencing a “rebound” effect in which we have seen patients with tumors as large as we did not see them many years ago, with the consequent consequences in terms of prognosis. The pandemic took us back in time, it seemed and identified that we had made great strides in the early diagnosis of neoplasia. The pandemic let us see that we are now living in another pandemic: cancer.

Is it important in your daily clinical activity to have diagnostic support tools?

They are of vital importance. With the daily increase in health information, especially on anatomical pathology and the molecular bases of diseases, it is very difficult to assimilate all of it, organize it, and, above all, put it at the service of the daily practice of the Pathology specialist. There are new releases of different textbooks almost every month, one buys the books and has not finished reading them and taking advantage of them when there are already new editions of these. So, using applications that compile information and present it in an orderly and usable way quickly saves study time and improves workflow. And not to mention the use of immunohistochemistry for the identification of tumors, I am sure that on more than one occasion a professional in Pathology feels “immuno-confused”, that is when ImmunoQuery is our best ally, our best friend, and comes in very useful to clarify the picture.

From your point of view, what are the biggest benefits you find in using ExpertPath and ImmunoQuery, individually and/or in combination?

I think that the two applications are complementary, without a doubt. One allows us to reach the other, solve a specific problem, make a diagnosis, and read and learn all the aspects that together comprise a nosological entity. And the greatest advantage lies precisely in that, in being intuitive, in being able to use them to solve doubts in a diagnosis, in being specific, but at the same time showing such a broad plethora of content, which makes the user open their eyes, broaden their diagnostic scope and ask themselves questions that, in the vast majority of cases, lead you to the most accurate answers.

How do you integrate the use of ExpertPath into your own routine?

ExpertPath is for me, my best knowledge source. I use it to gather in one place an organized way to access the correct information. It has something that I adore, and it is the opportunity to compare text and images, of excellent quality, on a single screen, a tool with which I have learned a lot, and if in doubt, it helps my medical specialists in training, or residents, to acquire skills for carrying out diagnoses. This is my success story, seeing resident doctors efficiently cover information on specific nosological entities and comparing them in real-time with others, in such a way that getting closer to the truth, to the correct diagnosis, is an increasingly feasible possibility.

With the daily increase in health information, especially on anatomical pathology and the molecular bases of diseases, it is very difficult to assimilate all of it, organize it, and above all, use it at the service of the daily practice for the Pathology specialist.