Healthcare systems across the world continue to face workforce shortages in cytology and pathology while simultaneously working to improve access to care. Remote digital cytology and Rapid On-Site Evaluation (ROSE) workflows are emerging as important tools to help pathology teams collaborate more efficiently and extend specialist expertise across locations.
Remote digital cytology is often discussed as a technology topic, but in practice adoption usually starts when existing workflows become difficult to sustain. That was a consistent theme throughout the American Society of Cytopathology (ASCT) webinar Implementing Remote Digital Cytology to Address Workforce Shortages & Enhance Patient Care. Moderated by Gianna Villegas, CT (ASCP)cm, the webinar featured Dr. Elizabeth Plocharczyk of Excelsior Pathology in Ithaca, New York, together with Kimberly Swingle and Lorraine Sanderson of Centralus Health.
Together, they described how remote digital cytology is being implemented in a rural New York health system dealing with staffing pressure, long travel distances, and the day-to-day challenge of maintaining pathology services across multiple hospitals.
Centralus Health is a four-hospital system in rural New York. During the webinar, Dr. Plocharczyk described hospitals spread across the Finger Lakes region, separated from major population centers and tertiary care centers by significant travel distances. In a setting like this, pathology coverage becomes as much a geography challenge as a staffing challenge.
When hospitals are far apart and specialist resources are limited, moving people between sites becomes more than a scheduling inconvenience. It can become a significant operational limitation. Remote digital cytology becomes relevant because it gives teams another way to think about access, coverage, and where expertise is actually needed.
The webinar made clear that the move toward remote digital cytology was driven by operational need. Centralus Health has been working with a relatively small pathology team covering a broad geographic area while facing the same workforce pressures seen across pathology and cytology more broadly.
In smaller or rural systems, losing even one person can represent a major reduction in available capacity. The same applies when highly specialized staff spend large portions of their time on tasks that could potentially be supported differently. One of the strongest points raised during the webinar was that people should work at the top of their licenses. When pathologists and cytologists are limited resources, workflows should protect their time for the work that genuinely requires their expertise.
Remote digital cytology fits into broader workflow changes. It supports review and adequacy workflows without relying entirely on the same physical movement model that older coverage patterns often required.
Another valuable part of the discussion was that remote digital cytology was not described as a simple technology purchase. Dr. Plocharczyk, Kimberly Swingle, and Lorraine Sanderson focused heavily on implementation, including validation, workflow integration, staff training, quality assurance, and operational planning.
The discussion also covered documentation requirements and the importance of validating the full telecytology workflow, including the equipment, software, communication systems, remote workstations, and personnel involved in the process. For pathology and cytology audiences, these details matter because they show that successful digital implementation is not simply about enabling remote viewing. The workflow itself has to become dependable enough to support real laboratory operations on a daily basis.
Remote digital cytology is compelling because it connects digital pathology to a visible operational need. Rather than beginning with a broad transformation initiative, the discussion stayed focused on a concrete question: how can a health system maintain access to cytology and pathology expertise when staffing is limited, geography is challenging, and traditional coverage models are becoming harder to sustain?
That framing is likely one reason these workflows continue to matter for pathology teams facing staffing limitations, growing case volumes, and increasing coordination demands across multiple locations. Remote digital cytology does not remove every operational challenge. What it can do is give teams a practical way to rethink coverage, centralization, and how specialist expertise is used across a distributed health system.
That is what makes this use case important. It presents digital pathology not as innovation for its own sake, but as part of the operational infrastructure needed to support everyday pathology work.
Whether you are exploring digital cytology for the first time or already working with digital pathology workflows, we hope this webinar offers practical insights and valuable perspectives from experienced professionals in the field.
If you would like to learn more about Grundium Ocus® pathology scanners or discuss your own digital pathology workflow needs, feel free to contact our team or request a personal demo.
