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Digital Pathology During the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy: Survey Study
- Source :
- Journal of Medical Internet Research, Vol 23, Iss 2, p e24266 (2021), Journal of Medical Internet Research
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- JMIR Publications, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Background Transition to digital pathology usually takes months or years to be completed. We were familiarizing ourselves with digital pathology solutions at the time when the COVID-19 outbreak forced us to embark on an abrupt transition to digital pathology. Objective The aim of this study was to quantitatively describe how the abrupt transition to digital pathology might affect the quality of diagnoses, model possible causes by probabilistic modeling, and qualitatively gauge the perception of this abrupt transition. Methods A total of 17 pathologists and residents participated in this study; these participants reviewed 25 additional test cases from the archives and completed a final psychologic survey. For each case, participants performed several different diagnostic tasks, and their results were recorded and compared with the original diagnoses performed using the gold standard method (ie, conventional microscopy). We performed Bayesian data analysis with probabilistic modeling. Results The overall analysis, comprising 1345 different items, resulted in a 9% (117/1345) error rate in using digital slides. The task of differentiating a neoplastic process from a nonneoplastic one accounted for an error rate of 10.7% (42/392), whereas the distinction of a malignant process from a benign one accounted for an error rate of 4.2% (11/258). Apart from residents, senior pathologists generated most discrepancies (7.9%, 13/164). Our model showed that these differences among career levels persisted even after adjusting for other factors. Conclusions Our findings are in line with previous findings, emphasizing that the duration of transition (ie, lengthy or abrupt) might not influence the diagnostic performance. Moreover, our findings highlight that senior pathologists may be limited by a digital gap, which may negatively affect their performance with digital pathology. These results can guide the process of digital transition in the field of pathology.
- Subjects :
- Diagnostic Imaging
medicine.medical_specialty
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
COVID19
Health Informatics
Audiology
probabilistic modeling
Affect (psychology)
lcsh:Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
01 natural sciences
Bayesian data analysis
Disease Outbreaks
010104 statistics & probability
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Surveys and Questionnaires
Epidemiology
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Humans
Medicine
0101 mathematics
Medical diagnosis
Microscopy
Original Paper
Pathology, Clinical
business.industry
lcsh:Public aspects of medicine
COVID-19
Internship and Residency
Outbreak
Digital pathology
Bayes Theorem
lcsh:RA1-1270
Gold standard (test)
Italy
030220 oncology & carcinogenesis
lcsh:R858-859.7
Clinical Competence
digital pathology
business
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14388871
- Volume :
- 23
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Medical Internet Research
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....cbb9c54a0b9d9c796f1460442b1735c7