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| BOOK REVIEW |
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| J Pathol Inform 2016,
7:34 |
Book review on "digital pathology": Historical perspectives, current concepts, & future applications
Paul J van Diest
Department of Pathology, UMC Utrecht, P. O. Box 85500, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| Date of Submission | 19-May-2016 |
| Date of Acceptance | 02-Jul-2016 |
| Date of Web Publication | 23-Aug-2016 |
Correspondence Address:
Paul J van Diest
Department of Pathology, UMC Utrecht, P. O. Box 85500, Utrecht
The Netherlands
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2153-3539.188944
How to cite this article:
van Diest PJ. Book review on "digital pathology": Historical perspectives, current concepts, & future applications. J Pathol Inform 2016;7:34 |
Kaplan KJ and Rao LKF
Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
Pages: 166 pages
ISBN In: 978-3-319-20378-2
At the first glance, this book is fairly thin for the ambitious title it carries, but it nevertheless presents a quite good overview of the issues it promises to discuss. Chapter 2 provides a succinct but complete overview of the various use cases of digital pathology (DP), useful for anyone looking for the arguments to convince the management that DP is a good idea. These use cases are further discussed in detail in the chapters thereafter. In Chapter 3, I miss as target population Networks of regional labs, which seems to be the main driver of DP implementation in the Netherlands. Chapter 4 deals business models for DP, or perhaps the lack thereof. Clearly, on the global costs of health care, pathology only takes up a fraction much <1%, and and pathology thereby provides extremely good value foir money, and DP is potentially a very good approach to that. This chapter could have been more detailed, especially the paragraph "return on investment," since this is where everybody will be looking when trying to make a business case. The chapter on "Telepathology and DP research" is a bit succinct, in contrast with the teleconsultation and education chapters that are fairly extensive (the latter except for the mega displays that are now available) and provide a good overview of the various use cases here. The legal/regulatory and standards' chapters are succinct, but quite useful. The final chapter on in vivo microscopy is a bit out of focus to me.
No doubt, there will be many more books written on DP in the future where important issues such as storage, hardware matters (computers, displays, and interaction devices) and issues with regard to the implementation of digital diagnostics (workflow, connections, etc.), and validation of digital diagnostics get some more attention. Nevertheless, this book provides overall a good introduction to DP in 166 pages for the interested user today.
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