Leslie Burnett^1,2,3
1Garvan Institute of Medical Research; ²St Vincent's Clinical Healthcare Campus UNSW Sydney; ³Virtus Health Specialist Diagnostics

Pathology reports are the primary mode of communication of results from the laboratory to the requesting clinician. Contemporary reports are largely text-based, and frequently monochrome. It is also commonplace for the clinician to receive a version of the report rendered by their local IT system that may differ in appearance from that generated by the laboratory.

This presentation will review the regulatory requirements for what should be present in a “good” pathology report, along with new tools to help pathology practices identify non-compliant reports. It will then describe important work being led by local pathologists to standardise reporting practices that carry risk of error or misinterpretation.

Finally, examples will be provided of new directions that pathology reports are exploring. These include: embedded “hot” links to Pubmed articles and educational resources, and AI-facilitated garnering of relevant information predicted to be useful for report interpretation or for planning next patient management steps.