TAMPA, Fla. — Waiting for lab results can be a stressful part of a medical diagnosis.

Pathologists at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa have a new and faster way to make a diagnosis, which in-turn means starting treatment sooner.

The Digital Pathology Lab houses nine digital scanners that convert traditional glass slides into high-resolution images.

“For the first time now ever, you can actually see those same images that a pathologist would see looking through a microscope, through this technology of digital pathology,” said Dr. William Westra, who serves as vice chair of Pathology at Moffitt.

Moffitt will digitize about 95% of its slides.

A robotic arm picks up a slide, puts it in a scanner that creates and stores a digital image.

Pathologists can access that high-resolution from their computer on campus or share it with other physicians around the globe.

Westra says the technology will cut down consultation turnaround times from weeks to hours.

“Once we begin associating those digital images with AI-empowered diagnostic algorithms, which, again, will allow us as pathologists to render diagnoses faster, more accurately and with higher precision,” he said.

Professionally, Joshua Rivera led the business side of launching the lab. Personally, he knows the importance of a quick diagnosis.

“I was diagnosed at the age of 27 with Ewing soft cell sarcoma and I was given a 15% chance of survival,” said Rivera who works at Moffitt as Pathology Business Operations director.

Rivera’s treatment included almost two years of chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries. He’s now a survivor advocating for other patients.

“Getting a cancer diagnosis is enough in itself and you just kind of, everything just becomes noise, right? And so you just you just want to know what exactly is it is,” said Rivera.

The goal of the new lab is to get those answers faster.

“Now, I come into my office and I can just open my computer and see these images, these wide, broad-field images and I can just so easily make diagnoses of those images,” said Westra. “Digital pathology just makes the whole process not just faster, but more accurate and more precise.”

The lab just opened in June and is already looking to expand by about double.