Daily use of telecytology in Hokkaido, Japan

Abstract

We established a static image telepathology system in Hokkaido, Japan, as follows; 1) The system has an FTP server which communicates with clients both on the internet and on the digitized public telephone line (ISDN) via a dialin server. 2) The images captured with a digital still camera show very high quality equivalent to that of HDTV. 3) The system is very cheap, easy to handle, and independent of any type of computer hardware platform. We planned that the static image telepathology should be first applied to the telediagnosis of cytology, and for the past five months as daily work we have diagnosed more than 140 cases only by looking at the videomonitor images transferred from the cytotechnologist of Wakkanai Municipal Hospital, 280 km from Sapporo. By means of the e-mail system (mailing list) we had quick and sufficient discussions about the cytologic findings and diagnoses. We conclude that telecytology is very useful not only for medicine in a region without a medical doctor specialized in cytodiagnosis, but for discussion and consultation among many cytopathologists and cytotechnologists separate from each other.