[The key role of standardized structured reporting in pathology. Producing high-quality data today and preparing...

The pathology report is a critical source of medical information. It must evolve from a traditionally narrative format, regardless of its qualitative value, toward a communication medium based on standardised and structured data. Already useful in current practice, the standardised structured reporting (SSR) will become a cornerstone of digital pathology, in synergy with digital imaging and artificial intelligence. The reliability of the SSR and the precision of the data it provides, correlated with multimodal sources of clinical, radiological, or biological information, will contribute to the foundations of highly performant digital solutions. Despite its considerable potential, the SSR remains underutilised. Although the concept was favourably received by the specialty twenty years ago, the SSR has often been described as insufficiently scalable, poorly ergonomic, and a source of time loss in daily practice. Once challenged by the capacity of natural language processing (NLP) to structure retrospectively narrative reports, the SSR ultimately emerges as the most reliable data source for effective patient care and high-performing research. New tools developed within the framework of the national Impulsioninitiative should help overcome these reluctances and open concrete perspectives for pathologists from now on.