The innovative practice of the digital pathology diagnosis and application system in National Cheng Kung University Hospital (NCKUH) won the gold award in the smart healthcare category at the 25th Taiwan National Healthcare Quality Award. The purpose of this system is to improve the efficiency and accuracy of pathology diagnosis and to address various challenges in traditional diagnostic processes.
Traditional pathology diagnosis requires pathologists to manually review samples under a microscope, which is not only time-consuming but also prone to subjective factors, potentially leading to different diagnostic results. To solve these problems, NCKUH introduced digital pathology technology, using high-throughput scanners to digitize pathology slides and establishing a digital pathology image database that allows physicians to quickly retrieve and view pathology images, facilitating cross-regional diagnosis and collaboration. This system effectively reduced the re-cut rate of slides due to loss, damage, or fading by 20% and decreased the demand for physical slide retrieval by 80%.
Moreover, this system integrates artificial intelligence technology, developing the ALOVAS pathology image analysis platform, that automatically analyzes various liver diseases (such as fatty liver, ballooning degeneration cells, liver fibrosis, and liver cancer) and provides precise quantitative results, significantly improving diagnostic efficiency and consistency. For example, in cases of fatty liver, the consistency among pathologists using the ALOVAS platform increased from 0.47 to 0.72. This platform also won the 18th Taiwan National Innovation Award and obtained four domestic and international patents, demonstrating its innovation and practicality.
In terms of education, NCKU Hospital established the Cytomine teaching management platform, which supports 120 users operating online simultaneously. This has changed traditional teaching methods of microscopy and has been applied to the digitalization of histology education in Histology, Pathology, Medical Technology, and Dentistry. Since 2020, the hospital has successfully established a digital slide-teaching database and has held online national pathology sessions, promoting clinical and academic communication.
Additionally, from 2023 to 2025, we conducted 136 online digital pathology image consultations for difficult or special cases, significantly enhancing diagnostic speed and accuracy, showcasing the important role of digital pathology in inter-hospital collaboration and knowledge sharing. This award not only recognizes NCKUH's efforts in smart healthcare but also demonstrates the potential of digital pathology technology to enhance healthcare quality and efficiency. In the future, the hospital will continue to promote the application of digital pathology technology to provide better medical services for patients.
