Presented at the 1998 APIII Conference                        Return to 1998 Abstract Index

PALGA, THE NATIONWIDE DUTCH ANATOMIC PATHOLOGY INFORMATION SYSTEM
http://www.medweb.nl/dutch.soc.pathology/palgapost.htm

Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis
Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
J.L.G. Blaauwgeers, MD
H.M. Ruitenberg, MD, Diakonessenhuis, Utrecht
M.K. Casparie, MD, Internal Medicine, PALGA, Utrecht

The PALGA organization (a Dutch acronym for Pathological Anatomical National Automated Archive) was founded in 1971 by a small group of enthusiastic pathologists who wanted to investigate the possible role of computer systems in pathology, not only on a laboratory level but also on a national level.
Since those early days, PALGA has developed a system with a central database filing abstracts of all 70 Dutch anatomic pathology departments, linked to the system by a nationwide computer network. Diagnostic terms, added to each report by the pathologist, are automatically translated in SNOMED codes. At this moment, about 27.5 million abstracts of pathology reports of 7.5 million patients are stored. As a non-profit organization, PALGA is centrally funded by the governement.

For daily practise, each of the Pathology departments has it own local system for processing pathology reports. Most of them are using a hard- and software package developed by PALGA itself, called the Decentral PALGA System (DPS). The complete reports are stored on a local harddisk, while abstracts with the diagnostic terms are sent to the central database. In addition to this, in an overnight procedure, every specimen is provided with the results of a nationwide search in the central database, for previous histo- and cytological examinations of the patient.

Data in the national database are used for several purposes, such as the signaling of all cancer incidences, quality control programs, follow-up reports and retrieval of certain diagnoses for research projects.

In fact, PALGA already is the Pathology part of a (today not yet existing) nationwide Computerized Medical Patient Record and is in that way unique in the world.