Karen,

This is a popular question for debate on the Microscopy and Confocal
mailing list. Some say "go all digital now!", others say it's not time,
others (like me) say "shoot film, scan the negatives or slides into a
computer & process, then archive the original film". And so on...

It's complicated, and to a large extent, the answer depends on  what you
need the images for, and what legal questions are involved. I would imagine
that latter bit is very important for clinical facilities.

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Phil

>Histonetters,
>
>I've also been curious about a related issue.  Is anyone changing over to
>digital archiving with image processors?  Do you think this will eventually
>happen across the field?  Will it a mean a change in basic techniques?  For
>instance, will it mean a change from chromogenic to fluorescent methods?
>
>Just curious Karen.
>
>Since there has been more than one "where's the mail" comment, please allow
>me to try to generate some...
>
>Something that I've been curious about for some time is how the field of
>histotechnology has changed. Specifically, what job skills were required
>when someone first took a histotech job, and what are required now? Are
>there skills that were essential at one time, but are now trivial? Note,
>not "lost", or falsely regarded as now unimportant, but are now genuinely
>unimportant. Or have the basic technology and the needed skills remained
>the same, with the addition of new techniques such as all the
>immunostaining methods now used.
>
>Another way this might be asked is how have new technologies in microscopy
>(such as confocal and AFM) and computers affected histotechnology? This may
>not be a direct effect (I doubt many hospitals use AFMs in their
>diagnoses), but the information gleaned by these new technologies may have
>caused changes in procedures in histotech labs. I don't know, so I ask.
>
>Caveat: since I'm the technical editor for Microscopy Today, I'd be happy
>to invite an article or more on this subject!
>
>Phil
>
>****be famous! send in a tech tip or question***
>Philip Oshel
>Technical Editor, Microscopy Today
>PO Box 620068
>Middleton, WI  53562
>(608) 833-2885
>oshel@terracom.net