Many misunderstandings exist about sharing patient information between Health Care Professionals. Most important there is no need to remove healthcare data because of privacy or consent if the sharing of information happens in a diagnostic or curative context. Removing background data like gender, age, antecendents actually induces a risk for error since these are all potentially relevant for making a diagnosis. In other words if Dr A decides they need advice from Dr B to come to a final diagnosis it is the right of Dr A to share patient medical information. That being said the way in which data is shared needs to comply to certain criteria regarding security and the GDPR data protection. Read more in our next section, full details on our data processor agreement are here Terms of use and Data Processor agreements The advantages of Digital Pathology image sharing versus conventional glass shipping greatly favour digital pathology, but as with all new technologies it is necessary to explain this in detail for data protection officers and security officers.

The situation is different when the intended use changes. If you want to use Patient Health data such as slide images for research or education there is a real need to remove all identifiable data. Pathomation allows users to remove identifiable data from whole slide images, read more here When Do I Need to Anonymize WSI? and How to Use the Anonymize Function