Greetings from the Chairman

As you all know, this is an extremely important time for our society, and I feel the weight of my responsibility in taking over as president. In addition, as of the end of March this year, Dr. Yasunari Tsuchihashi and Ms. Yoshiko Tsukui, who have served as our secretariat for a long time, will be leaving their roles, and on April 1, we will sign a contract with Kokusai Shosha for a new secretariat and start a new study group. It can be said that we are entering a phase of great change in our future management.

We have been contributing to the development of digitalization and telemedicine in Japan for 19 years since the first general meeting was held in Tokyo in 2002, and we will continue to expand our functions as a society that can be of help to many academic societies involved in pathological diagnosis and cytodiagnosis, represented by the Japanese Society of Pathology and the Japanese Society of Clinical Cytology, in the introduction of digitalization and artificial intelligence in pathology.

The number of participants at the Annual Meeting has increased significantly, and we were able to welcome over 300 participants at the 2019 Annual Meeting in Hamamatsu. We have also made great progress with the addition of international collaboration programs and the revitalization of our affiliated research groups.

As COVID 19 rages on, our daily environment is changing drastically, and the environment of pathology is also about to change drastically worldwide. In the U.S., the CAP has taken the initiative to take emergency measures to allow home diagnosis as a medical treatment, and the DPA is playing a central role in working toward the establishment of such a law. In the United States, the CAP has taken emergency measures to allow home diagnosis as a medical practice.

In addition, the Japan Society of Digital Pathology has set a major goal for this year. Under the leadership of Dr. Ichiro Mori, the former president of the society, a working group is being set up to achieve this goal. By incorporating, we hope to deepen our ties with international societies and become a hub for digital pathology in Asia. In addition, in order to promote the safe digitalization of pathological diagnosis and the clinical introduction of artificial intelligence in Japan, and to develop Japan as a leading country in DP, we will 1) widely introduce the excellent research of our members, 2) promote research to verify the safety of DP/AI, 3) hold regular educational seminars, 4) disseminate the trends of DP/AI outside of Japan, and 5) promote the development of DP/AI in Japan. We would like to expand our activities by: 1) introducing DP/AI to the public, 2) promoting research to verify the safety of DP/AI, 3) holding regular educational seminars, 4) informing the public about the trends of DP/AI in other countries, and 5) providing a roadmap to help new DP/AI adopters.

I would like to ask the opinions of our members to help us overcome this difficult situation and develop in the future, so I would like to ask for your support.

Chairman, Japanese Society for Digital Pathology
Professor, Department of Pathology, Nagasaki University School of Medicine
Junya Fukuoka