Diagnexia joins Sectra image network for up to 100,000 NHS pathology cases

Sectra (STO: SECT B), the medical imaging IT and cyber security company, said on 12 October 2026 that Diagnexia, a UK provider of digital pathology services, has signed up to use the Sectra Image Exchange Portal (IEP) to receive, send and report on pathology cases for NHS organisations that need outside specialist support. The contract covers up to 100,000 cases in its first year and renews annually, according to the company’s announcement. Its value was not disclosed.

IEP is a cloud-based, vendor-neutral service for sharing and working on medical images. Sectra said it is used by more than 500 institutions, mainly in radiology, and that following a substantial modernisation it can now be used for advanced workflows and is open to specialties beyond radiology. Under the arrangement, a laboratory can create a case as a job from its own worklist, delegate it to a receiving organisation such as Diagnexia, and have the completed report returned to its own records.

Sectra said the contract was signed in the second quarter of its 2026/2027 financial year. The announcement was datelined Linköping, Sweden.

What Diagnexia brings

According to the release, Diagnexia works with more than 30 NHS organisations and gives them access to more than 250 GMC-registered specialist pathologists. Its services connect directly with a trust’s existing laboratory information system and picture archiving and communication system (PACS). The company runs a histology laboratory in Oxford accredited by UKAS to ISO 15189:2022, and digital accessioning facilities in Oxford and Exeter, both registered with the Care Quality Commission.

UK pathology has spent a decade building digital capability one site at a time.

Donal O’Shea, Chief Executive Officer, Diagnexia

Mr O’Shea added that Sectra had already done the connecting work across more than 500 institutions in radiology. Jane Rendall, Managing Director of Sectra UK and Ireland, said hospitals already connected to IEP could reach Diagnexia’s reporting capacity through their existing connections and workflows, with “no new integration, no separate supplier onboarding, and no additional infrastructure.” She said the arrangement would help hospitals manage demand and reduce backlogs, and described a national telepathology network as becoming a reality.

What was not disclosed

Neither company gave the contract value, the price per case, the date the service starts or which NHS trusts will route work through the new link. The 100,000 figure is a ceiling for the first year; the release does not say whether any volume is committed, or how many cases Diagnexia currently reports for the NHS. It also does not say how reporting fees will be paid: whether trusts contract with Diagnexia directly or whether any element passes through Sectra.

Sectra’s release sets out the problem the arrangement is meant to address: NHS pathology faces growing case volumes, a limited number of reporting consultants and increasing subspecialisation, and sending work to external specialists often relies on bespoke arrangements, including the physical transport of glass slides, which slows reporting and creates administrative overhead for both the sending and receiving laboratories. Diagnexia gives access to its pathologists for routine, urgent and specialist cases, backlog clearance and attendance at multidisciplinary team meetings, the release said.

Our reading

The following is analysis by The Healthcare Daily.

• The Healthcare Daily’s reading: the deal treats outsourced histopathology reporting as a routing problem rather than an integration project. For trusts already on IEP, adding an external reporting provider becomes a commercial decision about price and turnaround, not an IT procurement, which could shorten the time it takes to buy extra reporting capacity.
• Because the exchange is vendor-neutral, the same connection that sends cases to Diagnexia could in principle send them to other reporting providers that join. If that happens, competition among outsourced pathology reporting firms would move further towards price, turnaround and specialist mix.
• The IEP route applies to cases that already exist as digital images. Trusts without slide scanning in place would still rely on physical transfer, for which Diagnexia runs accessioning facilities in Oxford and Exeter; the release does not say how such cases would move through IEP.