Webcasting pathology department conferences in a geographically distributed medical center.
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Date
2004-07-16
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Abstract
As academic pathology departments have become increasingly based in large regional medical systems spread across hundreds of square miles new methods are needed to tie these increasingly distributed departments together as integrated units An important part of that integration is the ability to share academic and teaching conferences across long distances In this article we present an effective low cost webcasting system that has evolved at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Department of Pathology over the past several years based on inexpensive widely available software To date the system has broadcast and archived more than 400 conferences and currently serves approximately 80 to 100 requests each week Important factors in the success of the program include the creation of a faculty steering committee to control resources and manage growth the availability of informatics faculty and support for technical staff and the decision to operate the service as part of the core information technology infrastructure of the department Webcasting will likely become an even more important academic and operational tool in the future as more of the department s conferences seminars and even working meetings are communicated through the webcasting infrastructure