What are the challenges for the modern pathologist?

To answer this pivotal question we need to have an understanding of where the future of medicine is as a whole. It is very likely that the future of modern medicine will be dictated by (a) general technological advancement and (b) advancements in molecular medicine. Indeed, translational research has transformed modern clinical practice, ensuring the rapid transfer of molecular biology findings into the clinical setting. This transformation however brings with it a need for change in the way histopathologists practice tissue diagnostics. The diagnostic paradigm for the surgical and cellular pathologist is changing and there is now a growing need for histopathologists to adopt molecular diagnostics and incorporate molecular pathology as a mandatory component into the training of all future histopathologists.1

The demands of a personalised healthcare system are phenomenal, leading to an increased need for histopathology trainees to have experience of specialised therapeutic immunohistochemistry, low and high throughput molecular analyses, pathology bioinformatics, biobanking as well as quantitative digital pathology. Modern histopathologists must also be able to deal with the …