Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Department

The Department contains 7 divisions:

The Department was established along with the inauguration of Taiwan Veterans General Hospital in 1959. At that time, there were two Departments, i.e., Pathology Department and Laboratory Medicine Department. In 1994 these two Departments merged into one – the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Since 2003, the Department has been accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) until now. The Department was awarded the Symbol of National Quality (SNQ) for the efficient and effective subspecialist system in 2013, and further awarded for the state-of-the-art automatic and intellectual technology of laboratory medicine in 2020.

Since the late 1980s, the Department has been enforcing the pathology subspecialty system. All our pathologists have one or more subspecialties. Our team provides high-quality diagnoses for the following subspecialties: neuropathology, pulmonary and thoracic pathology, urinary tract pathology, gastrointestinal pathology, liver and biliary pathology, head and neck (including oral) pathology, breast pathology, gynecopathology, dermatopathology, soft tissue and bone pathology, endocrine pathology, hematopathology and cytopathology. Besides, we also provide consultation services for pathologists throughout the country. We have also put tremendous effort into research and publication. The works of our pathologists are cited by WHO Classification of Tumours and many renowned textbooks. Many pathologists also participate in international collaborative studies and are invited as co-authors of WHO publications.

Our department is leading in the field of digital pathology. We have introduced the avant-garde whole-slide scanning system for clinical service, education and archiving. We also apply the artificial intelligence technology to assist in precise pathology diagnosis and analysis. Recently, we have planned to establish a world-class top Precision Medicine Center, that incorporates comprehensive and precise molecular platforms contributing to cancer diagnosis and guidance for target therapy. In 2019, we started providing CAP-accredited services of next-generation sequencing for both neoplastic and non-neoplastic diseases.

In 2019, the phlebotomy section was extensively renovated in both environment and instrumentation. Our department employs automatic system that encompasses all the pipelines from patient registration, tube preparation and specimen tracking. All the procedures are connected with HIS, LIS and OSB. These intellectual systems are also applied to microbiological inoculation and culture. These efforts significantly reduce the need of man-power and enhance the efficiency as well.

We keep aiming at continuous improvement of our skills and provision of top-quality services to our patients in concordance with the vision and goals of the Hospital.