A PILOT-STUDY OF LOW-COST DYNAMIC TELEPATHOLOGY USING THE PUBLIC TELEPHONE NETWORK

A pilot trial of a low-cost telepathology system was conducted. A vide o-codec operating to the CIF standard was used to transmit pictures ov er the public telephone network. Twenty-seven specimens from the routi ne pathology workload of a district hospital were examined. The averag e length of time spent examining each specimen was 14 min (range 2-40) . The telepathology diagnoses were judged by conventional light micros copy of the specimens, performed by the same observer at a later date, and by a different observer. For the same observer, 23 diagnoses were correct (85%) by telepathology, three were acceptable (11%) and one w as incorrect (4%). The results were slightly worse for a different obs erver: 21 diagnoses were correct (78%) by telepathology, five diagnose s were acceptable (19%) and one diagnosis was incorrect (4%). The tech nique was slower than conventional dynamic telepathology (such as that based on communication by ISDN or leased circuits) and picture qualit y was poor by comparison. However, these are not necessarily disadvant ages in the context of the developing world, and since only a telephon e connection is required, the technique could become an important meth od of improving the distribution of scarce resources, such as patholog y expertise.