TPIS site upgrade - December 12, 2007

Our TPIS web site has now been updated to incorporate an entirely new infrastructure based on Java server pages.

Most of this will be invisible to you as the user, but it will allow us to introduce changes that were not possible under the old static HTML model.

The most obvious change is the minor facelift that you see on our main page. The menubar on the left side is now easier to navigate and it is easier for us to introduce alterations to it. A more substantial change, reflecting a major upgrade to our site, is the introduction of whole slide Digital imaging. Our first set of slides can be accessed by selecting "Banff components" in the "selected links" column on the right hand side of the homepage. This will take you to a page with a table representing the various grades of tubulitis, interstitial inflammation, and so forth, that comprise the Banff scoring system for allograft kidney rejection.

If you click on any of the scores within the acute categories (i.e., i, t, v or g) you will be taken to a page that contains a thumbnail of the selected score. From here you can click to get a larger image of the thumbnail or go to a whole slide presentation. This latter window has a fair amount of functionality and will even let you save individual views on your computer.

There will be an upcoming additional way to access the images and that is by means of a table that can be sorted by any of the Banff scoring variables. This will allow you, for example, to see several examples of t3 lesions and so forth. We feel that the ability to present multiple examples of a process is a powerful advantage over the usual form of textbook learning, where only a selected image is chosen to represent a histologic process.

Our approach essentially will provide a flexible study set and we hope that this translates into a useful tool to increase general expertise in the area of transplant biopsy interpretation. We will be adding additional slides to this, in order to populate the tables with larger number of cases. Meanwhile, we would be happy to hear what you think, what problems you might have with getting this to work on your computer, and any suggestions you may have for us.

Sincerely,

Michael Nalesnik

TPIS back online - June 5, 2007

Thanks to everyone who wrote to us expressing their desire to see TPIS back online. While the site was down, I thought that we owed our viewers a few words of explanation. Since we really do not have a convenient way of communicating things informally on the site, the idea of a "blog" seemed right.

Our University (Pittsburgh) recently had some issues with identifiable patient information being inadvertently posted online. Fortunately, this did not involve the TPIS site. However, in the wake of that episode, all websites with the potential of having identifiable patient information were taken offline until the matter could be resolved. In our case, this involved going through several thousand pages of information. Although we did not find anything inappropriate, we decided to make a number of minor alterations to such things as patient ages, for example, changing specific ages into more general terms such as "middle aged", to further avoid any issues along these lines.

We have taken advantage of this downtime to make major changes to the structure of the TPIS site which, at this time, will be invisible to you as a user. However, by converting large portions of the site to Java server pages, we have laid the groundwork for increased interactive user content in the future, and we consider this to be time well spent.

The review also allowed us to reflect on the website in general. One area that we would like to improve relates to the bulletin board that we use to post cases. This has been a target for spammers, and we have expended a fair amount of energy preventing this material from reaching the posting area on an almost daily basis. Given the low amount of activity on the board, though, we are eager to find a different format for this activity.

Another issue relates to the images. The photos that we use, uploaded over a number of years now, are designed to highlight specific histologic features. We have recently obtained a larger server and the hardware to make whole slide digital images available, and we will be enhancing the still images with whole slide imaging to provide a better experience for our viewers. Since we are at a University, setting up the server requires going through the proper administrative channels, which does take time. As the date to go live approaches, we will keep you informed. As has been our practice, this will be free and will not require registration.

In closing, I will say that our group is happy to see the site back online. If there are features you would like to see, or topics that you would like to see covered, an e-mail addressed to the TPIS administrator will reach us, or you can write to us individually (Jake Demetris M.D., Michael Nalesnik, M.D., Parmjeet Randhawa, M.D., Erin Ochoa, M.D., Tong Wu, M.D., Ph.D.) to let us know how we can improve the site.

Best wishes,

Michael Nalesnik