Qorvis Wins Gold SABRE Award and Silver SABRE Certificate of Excellence for Mexico's Country Brand Digital Platform, MexicoToday.org

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Qorvis Communications announced today the company won a Gold SABRE award in the Search Engine Optimization category for Mexico's country brand digital platform, MexicoToday.org. In addition to the Gold SABRE, the firm won a Silver SABRE Certificate of Excellence in the Social Media Hub category.

"For the second consecutive year, Qorvis and MexicoToday.org continue earning praise for the digital platform's creativity, uniqueness, integrity and efficiency by the most recognized experts in the public relations and advertising industries," said Michael J. Petruzzello, managing partner at Qorvis. "We are honored to have received the SABRE recognitions which represent a validation of the quality of work we do at our firm."

In addition to the Gold SABRE award and the Silver SABRE Certificate of Excellence announced today, MexicoToday.org has previously earned other prestigious recognitions:

• Four DC ADDY Awards, including a Gold ADDY for Best Overall Online Campaign and three Silver ADDYs for Mobile App and Website
• SABRE Award finalist for Search Engine Optimization
• Official Honoree of the 16^th Annual Webby Awards in the Tourism category, and among top entries with "remarkable achievement"
• Official Honoree of the 17^th Annual Webby Awards in the News and Information category, and among  top entries with "remarkable achievement"

MexicoToday.org is an international digital portal created and developed by Qorvis Communications in support of Marca País – Imagen de México. MexicoToday.org is an initiative to help promote a positive image of Mexico and keep audiences from around the world informed about the latest news on Mexico's economy, tourism industry, culture, environment and current events.

The prestigious SABRE Awards attract 2,000 entries from across North America each year. Winners of SABRE Awards represent the best that public relations has to offer.

About Qorvis Communications, LLC
Qorvis Communications is one of the nation's largest independent, integrated communications firms. Formed in August 2000, Qorvis provides its clients with expertise in the areas of public and media relations, advertising, public affairs, investor relations and financial services communications, grassroots campaigns, Internet-based campaigns, digital media strategies, online reputation management, and research and opinion surveys. For more information, visit www.qorvis.com, contact info@qorvis.com or follow us on Twitter: @qorvis.

SOURCE Qorvis Communications

View the original article here

Ensuring the Future of Digital Pathology

NORTHFIELD, Ill., May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The College of American Pathologists (CAP) released today a new evidence-based guideline, "Validating Whole Slide Imaging for Diagnostic Purposes in Pathology."  The guideline is the first of its kind and is now available in the CAP's peer-reviewed journal, Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.

The document serves as a practical guide for pathologists and laboratories seeking to confirm the accuracy and concordance of their own whole slide imaging (WSI) systems for diagnostic work, while ensuring the digital tool is being properly used for its intended clinical purpose in an effort to deliver optimal patient care. 

"We developed the guideline in anticipation of wider adoption of WSI in clinical practice," said Liron Pantanowitz, MD, FCAP, the lead author of the guideline and associate professor in the Departments of Pathology and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh. "The guideline marks a significant step forward in demonstrating the value of this emerging technology for diagnostic use."

Dr. Pantanowitz, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pathology Informatics and president of the Association for Pathology Informatics, led a panel of North American experts in digital pathology to develop the guideline.  Based on collective experiences and an extensive global literature review, the expert panel concluded that validation of WSI is crucial to ensure that diagnostic performance based on digitized slides is at least equivalent to that of glass slides and light microscopy.

Among the key points of the 12 recommendations outlined in the guideline are:

• Validation of the entire WSI system, involving pathologists trained to use the system, should be performed in a manner which emulates the laboratory's actual clinical environment.
• It is recommended that such a validation study include at least 60 routine cases per application, assessing intraobserver diagnostic concordance between digitized and glass slides viewed at least two weeks apart.
• It is important that the validation process confirms that all material present on a glass slide to be scanned is included in the digital image.

Currently, the US Food and Drug Administration does not approve WSI systems for primary diagnosis. However, pathologists practicing abroad can implement the guideline immediately in concordance with their country's regulatory guidelines for using WSI in making primary diagnoses.

"The pathology community has been awaiting the development of guidelines by organizations such as CAP concerning the implementation of WSI for diagnostic work," said Andrew J. Evans, MD, PhD, FRCPC, staff pathologist and associate professor at the University Health Network, Laboratory Medicine Program at Toronto General Hospital in Canada and member of the expert panel. "Following the completion of our own validation study at UHN, we have begun using WSI to render primary diagnoses. Since many other centers in Canada are preparing to implement WSI for clinical use, there is a substantial appetite north of the border for the final version of this paper."

WSI technology has several advantages for pathologists, including portability; ease of sharing and retrieval of archival images; and ability to make use of computer-aided diagnostic tools. Pathologists today are using WSI in teaching, research, and for handling consults from small, rural hospitals with no on-site pathologist. As the use of WSI expands, pathologists are seeing quicker turnaround times with the same quality of care.

The CAP Pathology & Laboratory Quality Center (the Center), a forum for developing evidence-based guidelines and consensus recommendations, provided the process for creating the guideline. The guideline will be updated as appropriate as new evidence-based research becomes available.

The CAP offers tools and resources to help further understanding and implementation of the guideline, including a summary of the recommendations. More information about how others are using digital pathology can be found in the CAP's ebook, New Paths…New Choices: Pathology in an Era of Advancing Science and Disruptive Health Economics, specifically chapter 7, "Digital Pathology: New Technology Breaks the Distance Barrier,"

The CAP also will host a webcast on Friday, May 17 to provide an overview of the guideline. Registration information will be available on cap.org in the near future.

About the College of American Pathologists
As the leading organization for board-certified pathologists, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) serves patients, pathologists, and the public by fostering and advocating excellence in the practice of pathology and laboratory medicine worldwide. With more than 18,000 physician members, the CAP has led as the gold standard in laboratory accreditation for 50 years with more than 7,300 CAP-accredited laboratories in 50 countries. Find more information about the CAP at cap.org.

SOURCE College of American Pathologists

View the original article here

Can computer geeks save the GOP? Meet the guys trying to give the party a digital edge

Power Players

If only Mitt Romney had had a few thousand more Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

So say Bret Jacobson and Ian Spencer, millennial techies and co-founders of the conservative digital strategy group Red Edge. The high-tech entrepreneurs believe the failed GOP presidential nominee could have defeated President Obama simply with a better showing on social media.

"If you had run a really competent, really aggressive digital campaign, you probably could have won an Electoral College vote,” says Jacobson of the 2012 election. “The difference is roughly 450,000 in a couple swing states and you could more than make up for that difference.”

Bold claims from a dynamic duo now leading the charge for a Republican Party reboot. Jacobson and Spencer say they are convinced that despite previous failed attempts, the party can surpass Democrats' social media machine by the 2016 presidential race.

The Obama campaign was "incredibly good at empowering people to receive and share information" on the web, Facebook in particular, which allowed the organizers and fundraisers to build individualized voter profiles based on people's profile information, Jacobson says.

"They were able to specifically reach out and… help identify these people who need to register to vote,” he says. “And it turns out that after a million people logged in, they actually yielded a million real world voter registrations and votes from those people, which is really powerful stuff.”

For Republicans to match, the Red Edge guys want an extreme makeover: bringing "Internet culture into the Republican culture," but ultimately tapping a tech-savvy candidate who can build a strong digital following.

Who among early 2016 candidates has an early edge? “Rand Paul,” says Spencer of the Kentucky Republican senator.

"In terms of the grassroots support his father [Ron Paul] has enjoyed, many of whom also support him, I think he's in a kind of unique position to really make some waves online...because there's so many small dollar donors who, who went to Ron and who may now go to Rand," he said.

To hear more about how Red Edge wants to buff up the GOP's digital strategy, and to hear how they think the RNC's "autopsy" of the party missed the mark, check out this episode of Power Players.

ABC's Eric Wray, Betsy Klein, Freda Kahen Kashi, Jim Martin, and Mary Quinn contributed to this episode.

View the original article here