Digital Pathology and Telepathology in Transplantation: Feasibility With the EHR

Digital pathology and telepathology play an emerging role conveying anatomical pathology diagnostic images in the Electronic Health Record. We sought to focus our attention to an innovative project, while identifying standards and practices between clinicians and the EHR (Electronic Health Record). The project aims at developing a second opinion network, based on telepathology, between two major transplantation centres over two years. The health authorities involved are the Hospital Trust of Verona and of Padua (Italy). In 2015 there were 376 renal and liver transplantations for both centres. We expect to significantly improve the transplantation workflow after combining the digital pathology platform with its proper and timely application in the telepathology network. Firstly it will allow the real time second opinion between pathologists in order to assess the suitability of the donor organs, avoiding the glass-slide transfer, with potential damage or loss. The technical partners delivered two slide scanners and software solutions to enable virtual microscopy and web-based digital slide sharing with storage resources. In addition, the project comprises an online survey which focuses on the accountability of the system, the user perception, and a concordance study for the project outcomes evaluation. The technical transactions between all the main actors and digital slides will be reviewed and updated in order to meet the integration standards and guideline according to IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) initiative, Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Level 7 (HL7). According to the first comparisons, we believe that the efforts to provide this new diagnostic imaging area to the actual EHR developments, will be rewarding and effective for the saving-life transplantation processes.