Professor Denis Cusack

want I can proceed on to talking about why we have to tackle this problem with a bit of vision, imagination and innovation.

It's a combination of both.

We have a shortage of pathologists in the country, and it's particularly acute for children and newborns, pathology service, but also in adult services.

And there's also huge pressure on our pathology colleagues to provide diagnostic services for cancer and other diseases.

And that's actually what has brought about the crisis, the combination of the shortage of pathologists

and the pressures on them to provide the pathology service to hospital patients.

So it is a major issue at the moment.

Well, the answer is, if we could, is to attract more pathologists to Autopsy's.

And one of the issues, I don't like speaking about something as crude as money, but the pathology fees have not actually been changed for decades.

So we also need to put proper remuneration and resources in.

But the conference, and we've been aware of it for a number of years, there is another way of looking at this.

We could look at the scanning and imaging autopsy, the virtual autopsy or virtopsy.

And this has been going on for decades.

Professor Richard Dirnhoper in Switzerland was one of the pioneers.

And because I'm here at a conference, I've just spoken with one of Oleg's professor, who's probably is one of the world's leading experts.

And we're very slow in Ireland, and I know that the Faculty of Pathology issued a report in January of this year, but it didn't really address the potential for CT scanning.

So instead of having to do a full dissection by a forensic pathologist, the body goes into an imaging scan, a CT scan, or an MRI scan, and an awful lot of information can be got from that.

It may not be the complete answer, but if you combine it with the pathologist, it could be more efficient.

And I do think we have to think outside the box.

And although there have been some autopsies in Ireland done with the aid of CT scanning, we really need to start a pilot project and bring this.