Telepathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), we are piloting a community telepathology network in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. This project started approximately four years ago with the implementation of a pathology digital image database (Figure 1) program at the UPMC. Currently, we have a large, active digital image archiving system, with three gross pathology image capture stations (Figure 2), ten microscopic capture stations (Figure 3), and twenty-four digital display stations (Figure 4) situated throughout the medical center.

Telepathology in Japan

Imagine a wealthy country with advanced technological and communications infrastructure and a fully realized industrial base. Imagine now that that same country has a pathologist-to-physician ratio less than one-half the average of similarly developed countries–a country with a manifestly greater apparent need for telepathology. The country in question is Japan, but don’t be too surprised to learn that telepathology has not taken off in a big way. As this report will show, while some of the reasons are specific to Japan, others relate directly to the field itself, and thus to why its progress has been slow everywhere.

Telepathology AT SUNY/SYRACUSE

Two years ago, one of our affiliated teaching hospitals (Wilson Memorial, Binghamton, N.Y.) requested neuropathology services to support their team of neurosurgeons and neuroradiologists. We explored almost every commercial telepathology system available at the time. It was a confusing maze of new acronyms and new technologies. We settled on a room video teleconferencing (VTC) system provided through the kind loan of a VTEL system from Peirce-Phelps. Since then we have been using a loaned CLI room system. We attached a standard CCD NTSC composite video camera to the CODEC- based VTC system. Although it was an Aoff the shelf @ system, we found the resolution to be adequate for neuropathology applicationsincluding intraoperative frozen section consultations. Because of our interest in improving the quality of our system, we began to develop what we call the Prototype Pathology Information Infrastructure (PPII). More on this later.