I am building a new lab, in addition Im planning to set my townhouse as a home office with a sign out desk near my fireplace and flat panel LCD TV (within reach of my cigar humidor and electronic wine cabinets).
In the lab, I will have an Olympus scope with a BX45TF frame, all flourite objective: 2x, 4x, 10x, 20x, 40x and 100x oil AND the DP-71 digital camera. The advantage of the new DP-71 camera is the embedded IP address, which once set up will act as a real time video conferencing with the ability to do telepathology.
At home, I plan to have a Nikon E400 with a digital camera hooked up to a suped up Alienware ALX desktop system complete with the wireless connection to my LIS so I can perform remote sign outs.
Now, the risk you run here is for the most part residency programs may not let you leave with slides. They run a liability in doing so, but the liability is technically no more than sending cases out for consult because the blocks *technically* are the real patient specimens (the slides are merely cuts of the prime material).
But I have known programs that allow slides to taken out of the lab by residents, especially if you had an apartment owned by the hospital or medical school or was very close. If you have a pressing reason to take your slides home like childcare or what not, it probably would be okay to ask, but I wouldnt just start taking the cases home at night on the sly.
Other aspects: people have told me technically you need CLIA approval to sign out material from home. I dispute that. Teleradiology as well as nuclear medicine scans are being signed out not only from home but from PDAs like Blackberries with no problem. CLIA approval from my understanding would only be needed if you were storing specimens OR processing specimens at your home. I was living in LA when I read a report with an address of a home that was 3 blocks down the road from me, where apparently a local prominent pathologist was receiving consult cases.
