Telemedicine of the future: Teleneuropathology

Abstract

The chief relevance of telemedicine lies in its capability to link medical practitioners and remote hospitals to larger or specialized facilities in a very fast electronic manner. This may become even more important due to current increase in subspecialization and demand for more precise diagnosis and consultation in difficult cases. A network attaching small clinics or laboratories to larger and more specialized units, and to highly specialized referral centers may improve the professional standard of health care services and education. For a wider use, a technological standardization will be required, since the existence of several types of computer and numerous image manipulation programs, have resulted in a proliferation of file formats. However, every potential user or client of telemedicine should keep in mind, that standardization also includes legal and ethical issues such as patient confidentiality and malpractice avoidance. The adoption of workable guidelines and protocols is required. Telepathology in general and teleneuropathology in particular is the practice of pathology at a distance, viewing digitized images of histological slides on a video monitor rather than directly through a light microscope. For the transmission of the digitized images from a telemicroscope to the remote diagnostic video monitor, different technologies such as ordinary telephone lines, broadband telecommunications channels, and the Internet can be used. The transmitted images may serve for primary neuropathological diagnosis, teleconsultation, quality assurance, proficiency testing, and distance learning. Static-imaging and dynamic-imaging are the two major competing technologies of telemicroscopy. Static-imaging systems appear to have levels of diagnostic accuracy which are not satisfactory for diagnostic neuropathology. On the contrary, high levels of diagnostic accuracy can be achieved using dynamic- imaging systems with the transmission of live video images in real time and by using a robotized telemicroscope with the possibility to examine the entire histological specimen under control of the remote teleneuropathologist.