Mairinger T, Netzer T T, Schoner W, Gschwendtner A
Department of Pathology, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
J Telemed Telecare. 1998;4(1):41-6. doi: 10.1258/1357633981931263.
If pathologists will benefit so much from using telepathology, why is it taking so long to be introduced? This question has been discussed between experts, but the potential users are rarely asked for their opinions. A questionnaire was sent to the 256 members of the Austrian Society of Pathology; this addressed general aspects of telemedicine, telepathology in frozen-section services and expert consultation, videoconferencing technologies, teleteaching and teletraining. The response rate was 46%. In general, the pathologists thought that telemedicine could become valuable in their daily routine. However, pathologists were most afraid of sampling errors in remote diagnosis and would not readily accept an alternative to the conventional method of looking at a sample. This is only possible using realtime, remotely controlled microscopes. Telepathology systems providing only still images would not be acceptable to most respondents. There was interest in the use of videoconferencing for clinicopathological conferences. Teleteaching and teletraining were seen as welcome additional techniques, but were nevertheless judged unable to replace classical methods of teaching and training.
如果病理学家能从远程病理学中获得如此多的益处，为何它的引入却耗时如此之久？专家们已就此问题展开讨论，但却很少征求潜在用户的意见。我们向奥地利病理学会的256名成员发放了一份调查问卷，内容涉及远程医疗的一般方面、冰冻切片服务和专家会诊中的远程病理学、视频会议技术、远程教学和远程培训。回复率为46%。总体而言，病理学家认为远程医疗在他们的日常工作中可能会变得有价值。然而，病理学家最担心远程诊断中的抽样误差，并且不会轻易接受替代传统观察样本方法的方式。这只有通过实时、远程控制的显微镜才能实现。大多数受访者不会接受仅提供静态图像的远程病理学系统。人们对将视频会议用于临床病理讨论会很感兴趣。远程教学和远程培训被视为受欢迎的辅助技术，但仍被认为无法取代传统的教学和培训方法。
