Dr. Ronald Weinstein, Telepathology Pioneer, Dies at 83


Dr. Weinstein completed his medical schooling at Tufts University in 1965 and accomplished his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, which at the time was experimenting with an early telemedicine program linking it by tv digital camera to a clinic at Logan Airport in Boston. He was requested to look in on a number of instances, and “that stuck in my mind,” he mentioned.

In 1975 he grew to become chairman of the pathology division at Rush-Presbyterian in Chicago, and 11 years later he was able to introduce the thought of telepathology, founding Corabi Telemetrics, considered one of a number of corporations he created or helped create to convey concepts developed in academia to market.

“Sears and Roebuck never intended to get into the financial business,” he mentioned in a speech a number of weeks earlier than the 1986 demonstration of his new know-how, referring to the retail big’s enlargement into banking at the time. “But somewhere along the line, engineers figured out how to put satellites in space and revolutionized the financial industry. And what I’m going to talk about today is how the very same changes are going to revolutionize the way that we practice medicine.”

Dr. Weinstein took his experience to the University of Arizona in 1990, changing into head of the pathology division at its College of Medicine. By the mid-1990s, telemedicine was nicely established, at least as an idea, and Bob Burns, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives with a background in laptop programming, took an curiosity in it and secured financing for a statewide initiative.

When the state requested the college to supervise the challenge, “they gave us the best man they had,” Mr. Burns, who grew to become a state senator, mentioned in a cellphone interview. That was Dr. Weinstein, who was named director when this system was initiated in 1996.

The challenge, Mr. Burns mentioned, made a selected effort to convey medical experience to distant areas, Indian reservations and prisons — and even overseas, to locations like Panama.

Elizabeth A. Krupinski, a longtime colleague and collaborator now at Emory University in Atlanta, mentioned Dr. Weinstein had each imaginative and prescient and folks expertise.



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