Essam Ayad
Telepathology, the practice of pathology at a long distance, has advanced continuously since 1986. The progress of telepathology passed through four stages: Static, Dynamic, Hybrid, and Whole Slide Imaging (WSI). Both conventional and innovative surgical pathology diagnostic services are being designed and implemented. The trial for applying telepathology systems in the Middle East began in 1994 in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, followed by another trial in Kuwait and Jordan in 1999 using the static telepathology technologies, but both trials were markedly limited. The actual practical start began in Egypt in 2002. The Egyptian trial applied static and dynamic techniques in a pilot project between the Italian Hospital in Cairo (NPO) and the Civico Hospital in Palermo. This project began in 2003 and continues to this day. Later in 2004, centers in Venice, London, and Pittsburgh participated actively in our project. During the period from 2003 till 2008, we consulted on many problematic pathological cases with these different specialized pathological centers in Italy, the UK, and the USA. We concluded from our experience that telepathology is a very useful and applicable tool for additional consulting on difficult pathological cases, especially for emerging countries with limited resources. In view of this success, we have already established our Digital Pathology Unit (DPU) in the pathology department at Cairo University in 2010. The application of the WSI technique in teaching for undergraduate and postgraduate candidates was greatly successful and encouraged us to create a huge digital pathology library, which will expand our Digital Pathology and E-learning programs to cover our staff and students both in Egypt and, in the longer term, in the wider Eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, we successfully used the WSI technique in telepathology for consulting a lot of cases. Nowadays, we are trying to establish an intranet between Egypt and the surrounding Arabic countries to support their pathology units, which have an insufficient number of pathologists, in consulting their cases.