About Osler

Osler is a free virtual guide on MyPathologyReport that helps you understand your laboratory results in plain language. Osler can explain pathology reports, blood tests, infection tests, and biomarker and genetic test results. Osler builds its answers from articles on this website, which are written and reviewed by pathologists and other laboratory medicine specialists. This page explains what Osler can do, what it cannot do, and where to go for help with everything else.

What is Osler?

Osler is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that explains laboratory medicine results to patients and their families. Laboratory medicine covers the tests done in a laboratory on a sample taken from your body, such as tissue, cells, blood, or urine. You can ask Osler a question or paste the text of a lab report, and Osler will explain it in plain language.

What makes Osler different from other AI chatbots is where its answers come from. Osler does not search the wider internet for answers. Instead, it builds its answers from articles on MyPathologyReport, written and reviewed by pathologists and other laboratory medicine specialists. This means the explanations you get from Osler are grounded in the same expert-reviewed content you can read on this website.

Osler is designed to work like a knowledgeable doctor sitting beside you, going through your report with you. The goal is to help you understand what your results say and feel better prepared to talk with your healthcare team. Osler is not a doctor, and it does not replace the advice of the people caring for you.

What can Osler help with?

Osler can help with results from almost any laboratory test, as long as the test was done on a lab sample. The most common types of results Osler explains are listed below.

• Pathology reports. Osler can explain reports from biopsies, surgeries, and cytology tests, including the diagnosis, grade, stage, margins, and other features a pathologist describes.
• Blood tests. Osler can explain common tests such as a complete blood count, metabolic panel, liver tests, kidney tests, thyroid tests, and cholesterol tests, including what each test measures.
• Tests for infections. Osler can explain cultures, Gram stains, PCR tests, antigen tests, and antibody tests, and what positive or negative results usually mean.
• Biomarker tests. Osler can explain tests done on a tumor, such as HER2, ER and PR, PD-L1, and mismatch repair (MMR) testing, and why your doctor may have ordered them.
• Genetic tests. Osler can explain results from inherited (germline) genetic tests, such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, and from tests that look for genetic changes inside a tumor.
• Medical words. Osler can explain an unfamiliar word or phrase from a lab report, even if you do not want to share the whole report.
• Questions for your doctor. Osler can suggest questions to bring to your next appointment, based on the result you shared.

What can’t Osler do?

Osler has clear limits, and some questions belong with your healthcare team or with another type of specialist. Osler will tell you kindly when a question is outside what it can help with.

• Explain imaging reports. Osler does not explain reports from X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, ultrasounds, mammograms, PET scans, bone scans, or other scans. The section below explains why.
• Explain other tests not done in a laboratory. Osler does not explain ECG, echocardiogram, stress test, breathing test, sleep study, EEG, or EMG results, or the description written during an endoscopy or colonoscopy.
• Find, access, or send your results. Osler cannot look up your results, check whether they are ready, or contact your lab or doctor for you.
• Tell you what a result means for your health. Osler can explain what a test measures and what a high or low result can mean in general. It cannot tell you whether your own number is dangerous, what your outlook is, or how likely a condition is to come back.
• Recommend treatment. Osler can explain what a treatment is if it appears in your report. It does not recommend, compare, or rank treatments, and it does not advise on medications or doses.
• Explain symptoms. Osler does not work out what might be causing a symptom, and it does not suggest which tests or scans you should have.
• Give a second opinion. Osler does not review whether a diagnosis is correct. If you would like a second opinion, your doctor can arrange one.
• Help in an emergency. Osler is not monitored in real time and cannot help in an urgent situation.

Why doesn’t Osler explain imaging reports?

Osler does not explain imaging reports because imaging is a different medical specialty from laboratory medicine. A laboratory result comes from testing a sample, such as tissue or blood, and a pathologist or laboratory specialist reports it. An imaging test, such as a CT scan, MRI, or ultrasound, takes pictures of the inside of your body. A radiologist, a doctor who specializes in medical imaging, reviews those pictures.

An imaging report describes what the radiologist saw on pictures that Osler cannot see. The words in an imaging report also depend heavily on those pictures and on your medical history. For these reasons, Osler will not review an imaging report, even word by word, and will not ask you to share one. The best person to explain your imaging report is the doctor who ordered the scan, who can review the pictures together with the rest of your situation.

Imaging and laboratory tests are often used together. For example, a scan may find an area that needs a closer look, and a biopsy of that area is then sent to the laboratory. Osler cannot explain the scan, but it can help you understand the pathology report from the biopsy. Pathology reports sometimes mention imaging, for example by saying a biopsy was “ultrasound-guided” or asking your doctor to “correlate with imaging.” Osler can explain what phrases like these mean in your pathology report.

Can Osler get my results for me?

No, Osler cannot get your results, and neither can anyone at MyPathologyReport. MyPathologyReport is an independent education website and registered not-for-profit charity. It is not connected to any hospital, laboratory, clinic, doctor’s office, or patient portal, so Osler has no way to see, find, or send your results.

If you are waiting for a result or want a copy, the following places can usually help.

• Your doctor’s office. The office of the doctor who ordered your test can tell you whether your result is ready and what it means.
• Your patient portal. Many hospitals and laboratories offer an online patient portal where you can view your results. The portal’s own help line can assist with sign-in problems.
• The health records department. The hospital or laboratory that did your test can provide a copy of your report, usually through its health records (medical records) department.

The time it takes to get a result varies by test and by laboratory. Some results take longer because the pathologist needs extra testing to reach a final diagnosis. Once you have your result, you can share the text with Osler, and Osler will help you understand it.

How does Osler work?

Osler answers your questions using articles from MyPathologyReport, written and reviewed by pathologists and other laboratory medicine specialists. When you ask a question, Osler searches the website for the articles that best match it. Osler then uses an AI language model to write an answer in plain language based on those articles. Where it helps, Osler will point you to an article on the website so you can read more.

Like any AI tool, Osler can make mistakes or misunderstand a question. If an answer does not make sense or does not match what your doctor told you, trust your healthcare team. Osler’s answers are a starting point for a conversation with your doctor, not a replacement.

How do I share my report with Osler?

You can share a laboratory report with Osler by copying the text from your report and pasting it into the chat box. You can paste the whole report or only the part you have questions about. Osler works only with laboratory reports, so please do not paste imaging reports or other reports that do not come from a laboratory.

Before you paste your report, please remove the following personal details.

• Your name. Remove your first and last name wherever they appear.
• Your date of birth. Other dates, such as the date your sample was collected, can stay.
• Your identification numbers. Remove your health card number, insurance number, and medical record number. Osler automatically hides report numbers, such as a surgical pathology or accession number.
• Your contact details. Remove your address, phone number, and email address.

The names of your doctors and the hospital or laboratory can stay in the report, because Osler does not treat them as your personal information.

What happens to the information I share with Osler?

Osler uses the questions and reports you share to write your answer and improve Osler and this website. The MyPathologyReport team stores and reviews questions sent to Osler, without identifying who asked them. This review helps us improve Osler’s answers and find topics where patients need new articles.

Osler is also part of a research study about how well it helps patients understand their results. At the end of a conversation, you may be invited to complete a short survey. Taking part in the survey is optional and does not change the help Osler gives you.

When should I contact my healthcare team instead of using Osler?

Contact your healthcare team instead of Osler whenever you have a new or worsening symptom, a question about your treatment, or a decision to make about your care. Your team knows your full medical history and can examine you, which Osler cannot do.

If you think you are having a medical emergency, call your local emergency number (911 in Canada and the United States) or go to the nearest emergency department. If you are having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in Canada and the United States.

Who created Osler?

Osler was created by MyPathologyReport, a registered not-for-profit charity that provides free, plain-language education about pathology and laboratory medicine. The articles Osler relies on are written and reviewed by a team of pathologists, laboratory medicine specialists, and scientists. You can learn more about the people behind the website on our Our Team and About Us pages.

To read how MyPathologyReport handles website data, see our privacy policy. If you have a question or comment about Osler, please get in touch with us.