Tele-Pathology: A Use Case In Colombia

Colombia is a middle income country with a growing incidence of cancer. There exists an acute shortage of trained pathologists in Colombia, i.e., there are a total of 500 general pathologists for a total population of 44 million people. This lack of pathology expertise has resulted in misdiagnosis of this disease. This misinterpretation can lead patients to undergo unnecessary surgery and other treatments, or to miss out on treatments they do need. There is thus a clear lack of more dedicated cancer expertise and technology to improve and alleviate the disease burden caused by misdiagnosis. In this scenario, tele-pathology, the use of information technology and slide digitization (or digital pathology) for rendering remote diagnosis, may be a solution to improve the access to cancer pathology expertise and address the problem of having concentrated in large cities the cancer pathology expertise. This article presents a tele-pathology project in the context of a developing country and the different adapted solutions to overcome the lack of resources.