UPMC Health System
Department of Pathology, Division of Pathology Informatics
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Yukako Yagi

Yukako Yagi, John Gilbertson

Department of Pathology
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Pittsburgh, PA

Background: Pathologists are using computers daily for signing out cases, conferences, and to collect information through WWW. We decided to that if a computer becomes more friendly, portably and handy, it will be a powerful supplement tool for Anatomic Pathology. Pathologist can bring it anywhere and use it anytime to sign-out cases or review cases.

Design: We developed a prototype mobile pathology information system using a pocket pc (240x320 screen size) and 32 MB of exchangeable flash memory. With this small device, it can be used to navigate through a case and display images.

Results: Most pathologists could use the mobile device without detailed instruction. Although image size seems too small, the images were judged to be useful for identifying the major components of a case. Using multi-resolution image formats, excellent resolution and context could be obtained.

Conclusion: Multimedia pathology cases can be navigated and displayed on mobile devices such as the pocket pc. Though not as useful as a regular PC and Monitor, mobile devices have the potential to be good supplemental tools for pathology practice. Several aspects of the system, including multi-resolution image display and portability, exchangeable storage media have implications for larger, non-portable systems. In the future, we will attempt to access the UPMC LIS using a wireless network.