Financial benefits of digital pathology
| Area of financial benefit | Explanation |
| Delayed workforce expansion | Increases in pathologist productivity offsetting pressures to expand existing pathologist workforce |
| Reduced staff travel costs | Ability for consultants to work at a distance from the laboratory, at multiple sites |
| Delayed laboratory workforce expansion | Less time spent assembling and filing cases for MDT review, packing and dispatching cases for external review, retrieving slides from archives, chasing missing slides, recutting or restaining damaged slides |
| Savings on tissue/slide transfer between sites | Packing, postage, transport costs eliminated |
| Microscope/camera purchases and servicing | Regular purchases of light microscopy equipment no longer necessary |
| Reduced archive retrieval costs | Manpower required reduced Allows for archival of slides away from the hospital site, in facilities with lower costs |
| Reduced financial penalties | Avoidance of financial penalties related to cancer breeches relating to delays in obtaining pathological diagnosis |
| Reduced costs of referring work to commercial laboratory services | Digital pathology allows formation of NHS networks of trusted diagnosticians to provide safe, timely diagnosis of backlogs |
| Reduced locum costs | Locum pathologists are currently used by many institutions to cover short-term personnel deficits, for example, maternity leave, long-term sick leave, unexpected loss of staff. Improving capacity of existing pathology workforce with easy transfer of digital slides to sites with diagnostic capacity could reduce reliance of expensive locum cover |
| Potential income generation | Provides the infrastructure for trusts to outsource expertise/capacity, both within regional networks, and on a national/international market |
| Time saved by consultant pathologists | Potential productivity improvements of 10%–15%22 |