Is it really January 19th?  Many of you have probably already broken your new year resolutions, while I have yet to make one. For the past 19 days I have been behind and unable to catch up.  Is it because December was the busiest month for my business in 2010? Or because I have a 3 year old who kept me (and Santa) on our toes all month?  Who knows! All I know is I never had my usual end-of-year down time to get organized, clean out my email box, create a plan, and start out the new year fresh.  I love this time of year, but for some reason 2011 snuck up on me and has been riddled with stumbling blocks.  Including the flu (or some wicked virus since I did get my flu shot), the second cancellation of my coaching webinar (because of the flu), and the total crash of my wiki thanks to a routine (or so I thought…) software upgrade.

What’s a girl to do? Well, It’s time to declare a resolution!

Drum roll please……

With my rose colored glasses on and sipping a half full glass of lemonade (squeezed from life’s lemons, of course) I resolve to have a new attitude! 2011 will no longer control me, I now control 2011.

Sometimes all I need is a little perspective, and a tiny bit of patience to face my day-to-day challenges.  But obtaining the proper perspective isn’t possible unless you have the right attitude.  Armed with my positive attitude I am ready for January 20th- my proverbial new year.  Maybe I’ll take my own advice from my 2010 new year blog post and not stress over setbacks, but work hard to create realistic expectations so that setbacks do not occur often.

PS.  Don’t worry, the digital pathology wiki is up, has a new look, and is better than ever! I guess everything happens for a reason.

For over 10 years, the digital pathology industry has been riddled with vendors speaking their own language or languages (aka file format). Today a major milestone in interoperability was achieved with the final approval of Supplement 145; a DICOM universal format for whole slide images.  Although vendors will never give up their native tongue, this new supplement creates a universal language everyone can understand in digital pathology, even those outside of our industry.

WG-26, lead by Bruce Beckwith, MD, has worked hard for several years to create supplement 145.  Harry Solomon of GE Healthcare contributed a lot of help over the past year to move this to ballot and beyond.  Harry put forward the following comments in an email to WG-26 today:

I’d like to add my thanks to the members of DICOM WG-26 for the significant body of pathology domain knowledge that has been added to the DICOM Standard, both in this new Supplement 145, and in Supplement 122 in 2008.  That knowledge is now available to further improve interoperability in a field that was early to health informatics standards with the Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology, now known as the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), and is now poised for a significant leap with digital pathology.

Here are some statistics on that domain knowledge base:

• One major new DICOM Information Object Definition (Whole Slide Imaging) with new concepts to manage the huge WSI data set
• A major revision of a DICOM Information Entity (Specimen) with a rigorous information model
• 56 new data elements added to the DICOM Standard in 14 new or revised modules
• 7 new or revised DICOM structured data templates and 18 new defined value sets
• 80 new coded terminology concepts added to SNOMED, and 36 added to DICOM
• 40 pages of explanatory information about pathology workflow and imaging

Overall, this is another major step forward in the clinical use of digital pathology.  Thank you to everyone who worked hard to make this a reality!  The final document will be available within the next week.

I love resolutions and the start of a new year!  Being an entrepreneur, I have many resolutions. The most important one, resolving to make my company a smashing success in 2010! To achieve success, I am working on a business plan.  Once complete, I will break my plan down into smaller resolutions, or milestones.

Creating milestones can make big, overwhelming goals or projects manageable, and allow you to celebrate accomplishments along the way. Along with my resolution milestones, I routinely use milestones in all my consulting projects. Milestones outline a path of success, and allow clients to monitor and quantify progress clearly and easily. This methodology can be used by anyone working on a Digital Pathology project, and here are some tips to get started.

• Write a project or business plan that outlines and strategizes the scope of your goal
• Identify a realistic timeframe for executing your plan
• Break your plan down into action points
• Group action points into milestones
• If you are working with a committee or group, Project Management Software can make a big difference.  I love BaseCamp!
• Celebrate each milestone, big or small, it’s a step toward the finish!
• Do not stress over setbacks, but work hard to create realistic expectations so that setbacks do not occur often

In 2010, create and celebrate your digital pathology milestones.  Need help getting started, read my post “Empowering YOU To Take The First Step Forward.”