6th ESACP Congress, Heidelberg, April 7-11, 1999

A058
CRITICAL EVALUATION OF CURRENTLY AVAILABLE COMMERCIAL TELEPATHOLOGY SYSTEMS
Ganslandt T 1, Korsching E 2, Boecker W 2, Spiegel HU 1, Senninger N 1

1) Klinik & Poliklinik für Allgemeine Chirugie, WWU Münster,Germany, 2) Gerhard-Domagk-Institut für Pathologie, WWU Münster,Germany

Introduction: Telepathology as a subset of the growing field of telemedicine is becoming an established method of consultation.Currently available systems, though, are still under development and subject to limitations concerning usability and resources necessary for their implementation. Therefore the aim of this paper is toevaluate these systems in a real-life, clinical setting. Material & Methods: Four vendors of telepathology systems(Nikon, Zeiss, Olympus, Leica) are evaluated for a 6 to 8 week period. Server units located at the surgical department areconnected to client units at the pathology department using a 1O Mbit local area network. Evaluation focuses on features, usability and connectivity and is carried out by an interdisciplinary team including surgeons, pathologists and medical computer scientists. Preliminary Results: At this time two PC-based systems have been evaluated. While the hardware (microscope, video-capture) seems to be very reliable, the software is still under development. One system provided a feature-rich environment with built-in videoconferencing, multiuser access and image caching, but had limitations in achieving remote control over focus and lighting. The other system concentrated on a limited set of features but achieved stable microscope control. Practical usability was limited in one system by a user interface not conforming to Windows standards. Means for standardized data exchange have not been implemented yet. Conclusions: The reviewed telepathology systems are still under development. A tradeoff between features, ease-of-use and stability should be achieved. Major efforts are necessary to improve the flexibility of the software to reflect the clinical workflow. To reach this goal clinical users should be closely integrated into the software development process.