Diagnexia joins Sectra's image exchange network to report NHS pathology cases remotely

Sectra, the Swedish imaging IT company, announced on 12 October 2026 that it has signed an agreement with Diagnexia, a UK digital pathology provider, so that Diagnexia can receive, send and report on pathology cases digitally for NHS organisations that need outside specialists ¹. The contract renews annually and covers up to 100,000 cases in its first year ¹.

What the agreement covers

Diagnexia will use the Sectra Image Exchange Portal (IEP), a cloud-based, vendor-neutral platform for sharing medical images and managing work between organisations ¹. Sectra says IEP is already used by more than 500 institutions, mostly in radiology, and that after a substantial modernisation it now supports specialties beyond radiology and workflows that go further than image sharing ¹.

In practice, a laboratory can turn a case on its worklist into a job, hand it to a receiving organisation and get the finished report back into its own records ¹. Sectra presents this as a replacement for the bespoke arrangements between individual laboratories that external reporting relies on today, which include sending physical glass slides and add administrative work at both ends ¹.

Diagnexia describes itself as a diagnostic partner to more than 30 NHS organisations, giving them access to over 250 GMC-registered specialist pathologists for routine, urgent and specialist cases, backlog clearance and multidisciplinary team meetings ¹. It runs a UKAS-accredited (ISO 15189:2022) histology laboratory in Oxford and digital accessioning sites in Oxford and Exeter, both registered with the CQC, and its services connect to trusts' existing LIS and PACS ¹.

What it means for the market

The main change is for trusts that already use IEP. Jane Rendall, managing director for Sectra UK and Ireland, said those hospitals can reach Diagnexia's reporting capacity through the connection they already have, with "No new integration, no separate supplier onboarding, and no additional infrastructure" ¹. That lowers the cost for a pathology department of adding an outsourced reporting provider, a decision that has usually meant setting up a separate arrangement ¹.

The announcement places the deal against pressure on NHS pathology: rising case volumes, a limited number of reporting consultants and growing subspecialisation, which means the best-placed pathologist is often at another organisation ¹. Sectra says the agreement supports the development of national telepathology networks in the UK ¹. Diagnexia chief executive Donal O'Shea said UK pathology "has spent a decade building digital capability one site at a time" ¹.

For Sectra, the contract extends a network built in radiology into pathology outsourcing, and each provider that joins makes the portal more useful to the trusts already on it ¹. For other outsourced reporting providers, it raises the question of whether they will need a presence on the same network to compete for NHS work, although the announcement does not address this.

Caveats

The only source is Sectra's own announcement. It gives no contract value, does not name the NHS organisations that will send cases through the portal, and offers no data on reporting times or backlog reductions. The 100,000-case figure is a ceiling for the first year rather than a committed volume, and the contract was signed in the second quarter of Sectra's 2026/2027 financial year ¹.