Weinstein's goal in expanding telepathology was to not just broaden medicine's reach but also to make it more human.

A doctor in Washington, DC, examined a tissue sample from a breast cancer patient using a microscope in August 1986 and accurately detected that her tumor had spread. The diagnosis was remarkable in that the tissue sample and microscope were located half a nation distant in El Paso, Texas.

It was a demonstration of telepathology, a technique that allows doctors to provide diagnoses and other medical opinions from a distance utilizing a variety of telecommunications technologies. The internet was still in its infancy at the time, fiber optics were not generally accessible, and high-definition televisions were unheard of. So it was a huge accomplishment for a doctor to be able to remotely manipulate a microscope and observe a clear enough picture to draw a conclusion.

Dr. Ronald Weinstein, the creator of Corabi Telemetrics and head of the pathology department at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago at the time, organized the demonstration. He also led the team that polished the technique. (In fact, it is he who coined the term "telepathology.") He spent the remainder of his career working to advance telemedicine in different forms, first in Chicago and then, beginning in 1990, at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, where he was a co-founder of the renowned Arizona Telemedicine Program.

Weinstein saw the potential of telepathology to expand medical access early on.

He stated in the journal Human Pathology in May 1986, a few months before his revolutionary experiment, that "the restricted availability of pathologists in certain rural places and regions covered by federal medical facilities constitutes a bottleneck in the United States health care delivery system."

His early vision of telemedicine's prospects had become a fundamental component of the healthcare system by the time he died last month, not just in pathology but also in a variety of other disciplines. Dr. Michael M.I. Abecassis, dean of the College of Medicine, announced Weinstein's death to the University of Arizona community. The Arizona Telemedicine Program, which he directed for 25 years, "linked more than 160 sites in 70 communities, bringing clinical services — in some cases lifesaving — to hundreds of thousands of patients, many of whom live in Arizona's medically underserved areas."

Weinstein died of heart failure on December 3 at a medical institution in Tucson, Arizona, according to his wife, Mary (Corabi) Weinstein. He was 83 years old when he died.

Ronald S Weinstein (the S stood for nothing and there was no period) was born in Schenectady, New York, on November 20, 1938, to H. Edward and Shirley (Diamond) Weinstein.

He was a pre-med student at Union College in Schenectady, but at his father's insistence, he chose a government course. He won the highest grade and a Ford Foundation summer fellowship working for Rep. Samuel Stratton of New York — "a revolutionary education for me," he said during the Tucson college's 2019 Founders Day talk. He claims that the abilities he learned back then have served him well throughout his life, particularly in his attempts to get government financing for medical ventures.

After graduating from Union College with a bachelor's degree in 1960, he enrolled in Albany Medical College, where he studied from 1960 to 1963 while concurrently working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In his 2019 speech, he related how he mistook an elderly guy for a cleaner and asked him to empty the garbage can, which he did. After a few minutes, he learned that the "janitor" as Nobel Prize-winning biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi. The Nobel Laureate became a friend and mentor once he went to apologize.

In 1965, he graduated from Tufts University and completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, which at the time was experimenting with an early telemedicine program that connected it to a clinic at Logan Airport in Boston through a television camera. "That stayed in my memory," he said when he was requested to check at a few instances.

He became chief of the pathology department at Rush-Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago in 1975, and 11 years later, he was ready to launch the concept of telepathology, forming Corabi Telemetrics, one of the numerous firms he founded or helped start to bring academic concepts to market.

He remarked in a speech a few weeks before the 1986 introduction of his new technology that "Sears and Roebuck never meant to enter into the financial sector," alluding to the retail giant's growth into banking at the time. "However, engineers eventually found out how to launch satellites into orbit, revolutionizing the finance business." And what I'm going to discuss today is how the same developments will transform the way we practice medicine."

At 1990, Weinstein moved to the University of Arizona, where he became the dean of the pathology department in the College of Medicine. Telemedicine was well established, at least as a concept, by the mid-1990s, and Bob Burns, an Arizona House of Representatives member who subsequently became a state senator, had a computer programming experience and became interested in it, gaining funding for a statewide project.

In a phone interview, Burns claimed that when the state requested the university to manage the project, "they gave us the greatest guy they had." Weinstein was chosen head of the program when it first began in 1996.

According to Burns, the initiative made a special effort to deliver medical knowledge to isolated locations, Indian reservations, and jails, as well as to countries like Panama.

Weinstein had both vision and people skills, according to Elizabeth A. Krupinski, a longstanding colleague, and partner currently at Emory University.

"He had a flair for figuring out where and how portions of the health-care process and results might be improved, designing a viable solution, and then finding the proper individuals to work with to make that vision a reality," she wrote in an email. "To properly maximize the outcomes, that approach always involved bringing in individuals from a broad array of experiences and viewpoints, as well as bringing in trainees so they could be a part of the future."

Weinstein's goal in expanding telepathology was to not just broaden medicine's reach but also to make it more human. At the Tucson Breast Center, one project he worked on allowed patients to get a breast biopsy, receive the findings, and speak with a specialist on the same day, avoiding a potentially lengthy and unpleasant wait.

During Weinstein's tenure on the project, this was a common topic of discussion. In 2007, he told the journal Health Executive, "The bulk of phone calls I receive are from ladies who want to know where their breast biopsy report is." "Their anxiety is palpable in their speech."

Weinstein is survived by a daughter, Katherine Weinstein Miller; a son, John; and two grandkids, in addition to his wife, whom he married in 1964.