La tele-ematologia nel consolidamento dei laboratori clinici

AUTHORS

ABSTRACT

Tele-haematology in the consolidation of clinical laboratories

Haematological laboratory diagnostics couldbenefit widely from telematics, but some critical issues need to be addressed for a successful organization. Imagetransmission is probably the most critical item. In fact, specific competences are required for the selection of thesamples to be reviewed, preparing of the slides, choosing fields and cells to be examined, and so on. Thetransmission of the entire blood film could be a good solution, but it is not yet available for laboratory haematology,while expert automated systems are nowadays ready for high performance processes without the need of specificskills.
Digitization of laboratory haematology can harmonize the activities utilizing the same rules of selection of thepreparations to be reviewed, and for the control, verification and validation of the analysed samples and finally forreporting. It offers support for consultancy and training. When these needs involve different sites far from each other,the transmission of data and images effectively requires automation technologies for preparing and reading thepreparations, information technologies for an integrated management of all the necessary data helpful for thediagnosis and a suitable network to make communications travel in suitable quantities and speeds.
The new frontiers of artificial intelligence will probably have a greater role both in the management of process, in theverification of automatic validations, and finally in the recognition of pathological morphological patterns. All this toolscannot replace the specialized expertise in the final supervision of haematological diagnoses, but will allow simpler,faster and safer management of haematological analyses and revisions, meeting the changing needs of modernlaboratory medicine.

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