Egypt’s Ministry of Health and Population has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Roche Diagnostics to establish a nationwide digital pathology programme aimed at strengthening diagnostic capacity and improving access to accurate cancer diagnosis across the country.
The agreement supports Egypt’s broader efforts to modernise healthcare services by integrating digital pathology technologies into public healthcare systems. The programme will enable pathology samples to be converted into high-resolution digital images that can be securely shared with specialists for remote review, helping to accelerate diagnosis and improve diagnostic accuracy.
The signing ceremony was attended by Minister of Health and Population Prof. Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar and Thomas Baumgartner, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Switzerland in Egypt, along with representatives from the ministry and Roche Diagnostics.
The new digital pathology network will be anchored at the Egyptian Center for Disease Control (CDC), which will serve as the central hub for the programme. Additional healthcare facilities across different governorates will be connected to the network, allowing primary diagnosis and rapid access to second opinions, particularly in areas where specialist pathologists are limited.
The system will utilise advanced diagnostic technologies, including Roche’s Ventana Digital Pathology scanner, capable of scanning up to 480 slides per day with high-resolution imaging and scan times of less than 36 seconds per slide. This capacity is expected to significantly improve laboratory efficiency and reduce turnaround times for diagnostic results.
The initiative also addresses a broader healthcare challenge in many African countries, where there is often only one pathologist per one million people, compared with approximately one per 25,000 people in the United States and the United Kingdom. Digital pathology can help alleviate this shortage by enabling remote collaboration among specialists and improving workflow efficiency.
The programme aligns closely with Egypt’s Presidential Women’s Health Initiative, particularly in supporting breast cancer detection and diagnosis. Since its launch in 2019, the initiative has recorded more than 65.6 million medical visits, conducted over 446,000 mammograms, analysed more than 51,000 tumour samples, and detected approximately 33,500 breast cancer cases.
Studies have also shown that AI-assisted digital pathology can significantly enhance diagnostic accuracy. Research indicates that AI-based image analysis can achieve over 90% sensitivity in detecting lymph node metastasis, rising to nearly 99% when combined with expert pathologist review.
During the event, attendees toured the CDC facilities in Imbaba, including the digital pathology laboratory and the Complete Genomic Profiling (CGP) laboratory, where demonstrations of digital workflows and AI-supported diagnostic analysis were presented.
Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar described the initiative as a strategic step toward advancing precision medicine and digital diagnostics in Egypt, noting that the network will serve as a cornerstone of the country’s modern healthcare infrastructure and support equitable access to advanced diagnostic services nationwide.
