Linköping, Sweden - September 21, 2026 - International medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra (STO: SECT B) has signed an agreement with Source BioScience UK Ltd (Source BioScience) in the UK to deliver its service for advanced share and collaborate workflows. As the first Sectra customer in this domain, Source BioScience will now be able to support NHS organisations that need to send pathology cases to external specialists. This lays the foundation for national telepathology networks in the UK, and for improved access to specialist pathologists.
The service, Sectra Image Exchange Portal (Sectra IEP), is a cloud-based, vendor-neutral platform for exchanging and collaborating around medical images. It is already used by more than 500 institutions, mainly within radiology. Recently, the service has undergone substantial modernisation which now makes it possible for healthcare providers to benefit from new advanced workflow functionality, for the service to be used by specialties other than radiology and for customers to move beyond image sharing to managing workflows between organisations.
"This milestone integration will give the NHS a seamless digital pathway to external specialists, with diagnoses delivered straight back into its own records - reducing turnaround times, easing consultant shortages and tackling reporting backlogs," says Nick Bills, Healthcare Director at Source BioScience.
Source BioScience is a UK laboratory services provider specialising in histopathology and genomics. Its pathology business supports more than 85 NHS trusts alongside a network of private healthcare clinics, with histopathology delivered from laboratories in Nottingham, Chichester and Cambridge.
NHS pathology services are handling growing case volumes with a limited number of reporting consultants, and increasing subspecialisation means the pathologist best suited to a case is often at another organisation. Sending work to external capacity providers today typically relies on bespoke arrangements between individual laboratories, including the transportation of physical glass slides. This slows reporting times and creates administrative overhead for both the sending and receiving laboratories. With Sectra's service, a case can be created as a job directly from a laboratory's worklist, delegated to a receiving organisation, and the completed report returned to the referring organisation's own records.
"IEP is the backbone of image sharing across the NHS. With our modernised platform, we are introducing advanced workflows between healthcare organisations, and extending that trusted national network into pathology. Connecting trusts directly with external specialists like Source BioScience means cases and completed reports move seamlessly across organisational boundaries. It is a step towards an NHS where expertise is always within reach, and where work moves between organisations as easily as it moves within them," says Jane Rendall, Managing Director for Sectra UK and Ireland.
The three-year contract was signed in the second quarter of Sectra's 2026/2027 fiscal year. Up to 60,000 cases are expected during the first year, scaling up in subsequent years.
Source BioScience Media Contact:
Klaudyna Johnstone, Commercial Director, klaudyna.johnstone@sourcebioscience.com