Dear Editor,
We read the publication named “Usefulness of WhatsApp
for Discussing Difficult Cases in Pathology Practice: A
Moroccan Experience.” with great interest
1. Bennani
and Sekal mentioned that “Sharing microphotographs
of histopathological or cytological cases via WhatsApp is
a very easy and fast method to obtain a second opinion in
pathology practice and also to discuss difficult cases
1.” We
would like to share our ideas on this report. First, there is
no doubt that e-communication is useful in medicine. The
application of telemedicine can be helpful in diagnostic
pathology. The use of WhatsApp has been proven to be
useful for pathology training
2. Nevertheless, there are
many issues to be recognized. First, sharing a patient’s data
on the network via WhatsApp is an exposure of private
data to a third party. This has to be carefully done and there
should be ways of guaranteeing the patient’s privacy
3.
Protecting the patient’s privacy is necessary. As noted by
Saranto et al., lack of patient data privacy can affect patient
safety
4. Crane and Gardner noted that it is necessary to
have standard guidelines for pathologists who use social
media professionally
5. The developed guidelines will
help prevent unwanted and unexpected problems due to
loss of patient privacy during network communication.
