Telepathology in France. Justifications and developments

Since 1985, the French National Association ADICAP (Association for the promotion of computer use in Cytology and Anatomic Pathology) has been active in the creation a microscope workstation for developing a bank of digitized images to be used for diagnostic and educational purposes. In 1989 one of the authors (P. Dusserre) has created a first telepathology network using this workstation. Since then, 32 workstations have been set up in private and public Departments of Pathology. Two of them are located overseas, in the Martinique and Guadeloupe islands. In this paper, the authors describe this system, called Transpath, which is a multi-purpose and modulable workstation. 3-years experience and several accuracy tests have shown that the quality of transmitted images ensure a reliable diagnosis in more than 95% of cases. It has been decided to extend this service to other French overseas territories and to develop a group of experts. The images bank will also be developed and recorded on CD-ROM. The authors intend to participate in a future European project (PILOT project, i.e. Pathology International and Local Operational Telematics), with the purpose of establishing real intercommunication between European and other networks on a worldwide basis.