Digital pathology is a dynamic, image-based environment that enables the acquisition, management and interpretation of pathology information generated from a digitized glass slide.
Healthcare applications include primary diagnosis, diagnostic consultation, intraoperative diagnosis, medical student and resident training, manual and semi-quantitative review of immunohistochemistry (IHC), clinical research, diagnostic decision support, peer review, and tumor boards.
Life Science applications include high throughput scanning of glass slides, quantitative analysis of whole slide images, immediate web based consultations with expert pathologists, and secure archival of pathology data.
Digital pathology is rapidly gaining momentum as a proven and essential technology; with specific support for education, tissue based research, drug development, and the practice of human pathology throughout the world. It is an innovation committed to the reduction of laboratory expenses, an improvement of operational efficiency, enhanced productivity, and improving treatment decisions and patient care.
A video on Digital Pathology
It can often be difficult to describe digital pathology without getting too technical. Following is a video produced by Nasjonal IKT in Norway. The three minute video does a wonderful job describing the many benefits of digital pathology.