Acceptance of telepathology in daily practice

The availability of pathology services differs greatly in our environment. Although pathology would be especially suit-able for being practised at a distance by transporting digital image information, the spread of telepathology into everyday work still is relatively slow. The article describes the situation of diffusion of this inno-vative technology by reviewing the literature and discussing this in context to data based on questionnaires dealing with the acceptance of telepathology. The current situation of telepathology can be discussed by five items for innovation spead: (1) communication and influence; (2) economic costs and benefits; (3) knowledge barriers and learning; (4) fea-sibility of techniques offered for the demands of the users; (5) clarification of the legal status and other factors concern-ing international collaboration. All these head lines do not represent realistic obstacles for the more widespread use of telepathology. The real drawbacks may therefore be found behind certain professional habits of pathologists. The most important causes may be that (a) telediagnosis is not as easy as it may seem at the first glance; (b) telepathology is seen as a potential highway to a world-wide competition of pathol-ogy service providers. As soon as these mostly unjustified prejudices are corrected and telepathology is percepted as ad-ditional technique in pathology, it will become a diagnostic tool as common and as useful as the telephone