Use of Telemedicine in Postgraduate Pathology Education

Objective: Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication for medical diagnosis, treatment, health education and research. Telepathology is diagnostic pathology at a distance. It functions with images viewed on a video monitor rather than directly through a microscope. Many years have passed since the evolution of telepathology. But no study has yet been done to evaluate the benefits postgraduates got through this. Therefore this study is undertaken to analyse the different impacts of telepathology on the postgraduate learning. Material and Methods: The study was done in Telemedicine Center of S. C. B. Medical College, Cuttack over a period of 9 years. The telepathology service was carried out by store and forward method using a CCD, a large computer server and a huge bandwidth network service (VSAT). The sessions with SGPGI, Lucknow were analysed and the benefits of postgraduates were studied. Results: The number of sessions held was 95. Out of which 92 sessions were with SGPGI. It included 202 cases transmitted from Lucknow and 186 cases from S. C. B. Medical College, Cuttack. The postgraduates had a chance to exposure to rare cases in renal pathology, dermatopathology and hepatopathology. The overall concordance rate with glass slide diagnosis was 87%. Conclusion: The diagnostic expertise through light microscopy and tele-images are not the same. But the telepathology system increased the ability of image analysis, histopathologic diagnosis of our postgraduates and also exposed them to many rare and interesting cases.