Oncology mission this year changed course to redirect our attention solely on the technical aspects of launching a successful telemedicine and telepathology program  for the Vietnamese pathologists and clinicians. Scott Kinder, an information technology specialist traveled to Vietnam with IHVN mission director Yen Nguyen and spent two days visiting the pathology labs at National Cancer Center K3 Hospital in Hanoi, two days at HCMC Oncology Hospital and one day at University Medicine & Pharmacy Pathology Lab in Saigon.

The main purpose of these visits is to assess the readiness of each Path Lab with their equipment, internet connections and the capacity of the hospital server to store all the digital scanned slides. Scott helped install the necessary conferencing software (Go To Meeting) in the main computer of each lab. At the end of the set up at each hospital, a trial teleconference with Dr. Vanessa Dayton in the US was organized, with many pathologists in Hanoi and Saigon tuning in remotely from their personal devices to test run all equipment and softwares and quality of the audio/video of the virtual conference.

As expected, several issues concerning the quality of the diagnostic slides prepared by the labs, poor internet connections at the sites and lack of a digital scanner, or lack of one in good working condition, proved to be a challenge for all parties involved.

This 2018 pilot program was very productive, as many aspects needed to run a smooth teleconference program such as the cloud server, the conferencing software, and the system in general were examined and discussed. It allowed both the educators in the US and the participants in Vietnam to practice their virtual sessions with the support of their IT department and our IHVN IT specialist Scott Kinder.