[Study of efficiancy of teleconsultation: the Telepathology Consultation Service of the Professional Assoziation of German Pathologists for the screening program of breast carcinoma].
OBJECTIVE
In the autumn a German screening program was started for detecting breast cancer in the population of women fifty and above. For the first time in this program, quality assurance rules were established: All statements of the radiologists and pathologists have to be confirmed by a second opinion. This improvement in quality is combined with a delay in time and additional expence. A new Telepathology Consultation Service was developed based on the experiences of the Telepathology Consultation Center of the UICC to speed up the second opinion process.


METHODS
The complete web-based service is operated under MS Windows 2003 Server, as web server the Internet Information Server, and the SQL-Server (both Microsoft) as the database. The websites, forms and control mechanism have been coded in by ASP scripts and JavaScript. A study to evaluate the effectiveness of telepathological consultation in comparison to conventional consultation has been carried out. Pathologists of the Professional Association of German Pathologists took part as well as requesting pathologists and as consultants for other participants.


CONCLUSIONS
The quality of telepathological diagnosis was comparable to the conventional diagnosis. Telepathology allows a faster respond of 1 to 2 day (conventional postal delay). The time to prepare a telepathology request is about twice as conventional. This ratio may be inverted by an interface between the Pathology Information System and the Telepathology Server and the use of virtual microscopy. The Telepathology Consultation Service of the Professional Association of German Pathologists is a fast and effective German-language, internet-based service for obtaining a second opinion.
Institut für Pathologie, Charité.
T
T
Schrader
P
P
Hufnagl
W
W
Schlake
M
M
Dietel
D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods; D010336:Pathology; D012955:Societies, Medical; D019113:Telepathology / Q000379:methods*