From Personal Tragedy to Precision Medicine: How ScanVan Is Transforming Pathology Research

A deeply personal experience inspired a bold innovation that could help reshape the future of pathology, rare disease research, and AI-enabled healthcare.

In a recent interview with The Pathologist, Todd Minnigh, Chief of Medical Imaging Innovations at Leidos, shared the story behind ScanVan™— a mobile digital pathology laboratory designed to bring enterprise-scale slide digitization directly to hospitals, laboratories, and research institutions. The mission began not with technology, but with family.

Minnigh's niece, Katie, underwent surgery after physicians suspected a hernia. Instead, doctors discovered a rare sarcoma. What followed was a complex and time-consuming diagnostic journey involving multiple institutions, pathology reviews, and specialist consultations before a definitive diagnosis could be reached. The experience highlighted a challenge faced by many patients with rare diseases: the expertise needed for diagnosis often exists, but accessing the right expertise for specialist review can take valuable time.

That challenge became the catalyst for ScanVan.

Bringing Digital Pathology to the Source

Developed by Leidos QTC Health Services in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Computational Pathology and AI Center of Excellence (CPACE), ScanVan is a mobile whole-slide imaging platform that digitizes pathology archives directly where they reside. Rather than transporting fragile glass slides across the country, ScanVan brings advanced scanning capabilities to hospitals, laboratories, academic medical centers, federal healthcare systems, military medical operations, and research institutions.

The self-contained mobile platform converts physical pathology collections into searchable digital datasets that can support clinical review, research collaboration, pharmaceutical development, and future AI applications. By bringing scanning technology to the archive, organizations can modernize decades of valuable pathology data without investing in permanent scanning infrastructure.

Unlocking the Value Hidden in Pathology Archives

Across healthcare systems, pathology archives contain decades of diagnostic information, but much of that data remains inaccessible in physical storage. Digitization transforms those collections into resources that can be securely shared, analyzed, and leveraged for research and patient care.

The impact is especially significant for rare diseases. Individual institutions may see only a small number of cases for certain rare cancers, limiting opportunities for research and pattern recognition. Digitized archives make it easier to aggregate data across institutions, helping researchers identify trends, support earlier diagnoses, and advance treatment development.

Built for Scale

ScanVan was designed to handle large pathology collections efficiently. The platform is capable of digitizing more than 16,000 slides per week, over 67,000 slides per month, and more than 800,000 slides annually. This throughput enables healthcare and research organizations to transform massive pathology archives into digital assets at enterprise scale.

The platform's mobile architecture also supports rapid deployment in a wide range of environments, including healthcare facilities, government organizations, and research institutions. Designed for domestic and global deployment, ScanVan can operate in external environments ranging from Alaska winters to Arizona summers.

Creating the Foundation for AI-Enabled Pathology

As digital pathology continues to evolve, access to high-quality datasets is becoming increasingly important for the development of AI-assisted diagnostic tools. ScanVan helps organizations create structured digital pathology repositories that can support biomarker discovery, retrospective studies, computational pathology research, and future AI model development.

The platform's secure, self-contained design also makes it well suited for sensitive healthcare and government environments. ScanVan can operate without external network access, supports disconnected and air-gapped workflows, and provides data delivery through removable storage media when required. Additional security features include fully self-contained deployment and 24-hour security monitoring.

Innovation Driven by Purpose

For Leidos QTC Health Services, ScanVan represents more than a technological advancement. It reflects a commitment to improving healthcare access, accelerating research, and helping clinicians make more informed decisions.

What began as one family's experience navigating a rare cancer diagnosis has evolved into a scalable platform capable of helping healthcare organizations unlock decades of pathology data and accelerate medical discovery.

As Minnigh told The Pathologist, "ScanVan doesn't start with technology. It starts with Katie." That personal mission continues to guide an innovation designed to help future patients receive answers faster and enable researchers to uncover new insights hidden within pathology archives.

Read the original feature in The Pathologist: https://thepathologist.com/issues/2026/articles/may/why-we-made-a-mobile-digital-pathology-lab/