Résumé
IntroductionMongolian rural population lack of access to adequate health services due to the fact that they live remotefrom urban hospitals. With the rapid spread of telemedicine in most countries, has been promoted as apromising tool to address deficiencies in delivering health care in developing countries.In late 2008 the Swiss Surgical Team (SST) started the telemedicine project MonTelNet in Mongolia incollaboration and with financial support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).GoalThis study aims at evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of such a service by reviewing 212 telepathologydiagnoses delivered to the local experts in Ulaanbaatar between January 2009 and June 2013.Materials and MethodsUnder the MonTelNet project all province (Aimag) hospitals were equipped with hardware necessaryfor practicing telemedicine, in particular with computers with digitalized microscopes and cameras. Thesoftware CampusMedicus® (CM) was developed together with Klughammer GmbH. Software and alldata and comments exchanged over the MonTelNet are stored on a central server. Each of the originaldiagnoses issued through the CM telepathology (TP) server was compared to an independent reviewdiagnosis based on the original glass slides.RESULT For 188 specimens (89.9%) the TP diagnosis were completely identical with the review diagnosison the original glass slide. 12 specimens (5.7%) showed minor discrepancies (clinically identical) and 5specimens (2.4%) showed moderate discrepancies which were not clinically relevant. four cases (1.9%)exhibited a marked discrepancy (clinically relevant) between the TP diagnosis and the review diagnosis.Three specimens were classified as “other”.DISCUSSION The results of the study show a very high accuracy of the TP diagnosis provided. The TPdiagnoses differed markedly from the review diagnoses based on the original glass slide in only 1.9%of the 212 cases. 89.9% of all cases showed complete concordance between TP and review. Thesefigures are comparable to figures from other evaluations of static image telepathology.Conclusion:1. The results of the study show a very high accuracy (94.7%) of the TP diagnosis provided. TheTP diagnoses 89.9% of all cases showed complete concordance between TP and conventionalreview.2. Problem with image selection show a different picture and occur more often in cases with markeddiscrepancies between TP and review - χ2-test shows significant correlation (p<0.001).