The initiative, signed between the Ministry of Health and Roche Diagnostics Egypt at the Egyptian Centre for Disease Control (EGYCDC), will deploy artificial intelligence-supported pathology systems to strengthen diagnostic capacity across hospitals and healthcare facilities, particularly for oncology services.
The memorandum was signed by Mohamed Hassani, assistant minister for health initiatives, and Moataz Nassef, chairman of Roche Egypt Diagnostics, in the presence of senior health officials, including representatives from the Teaching Hospitals and Institutes Authority, the Secretariat of Specialized Medical Centres, and the Presidential Women’s Health Initiative.
Abdel-Ghaffar said the network represents a strategic step in Egypt’s transition toward precision medicine and digital diagnostics, describing it as the foundation of a nationwide digital infrastructure to improve diagnostic services and treatment outcomes.
The system will allow pathology slides to be digitized and analyzed using artificial intelligence, enabling specialists to review cases remotely and reducing the impact of geographical distance on access to expert medical opinions.
The first phase will connect seven strategic locations, including the Egyptian Centre for Disease Control, the Egyptian Medical Research Centre at Ain Shams University, Nasser Institute Hospital, the Ministry of Health’s Central Laboratories, and specialized oncology centres in Sohag, Kafr El-Sheikh, and Damanhour.
Health officials said the technology is expected to increase diagnostic accuracy from 85 percent under conventional methods to about 92 percent, with sensitivity reaching 96.3 percent and specificity 93.3 percent.
Artificial intelligence can also detect about five percent of cases that may be missed by the human eye, according to the ministry.
The minister also highlighted progress under the Presidential Women’s Health Initiative, which reduced the average time between suspected diagnosis and the start of treatment from 270 days to 49 days, an 82 percent improvement, with plans to shorten the period further to 28 days.
Abdel-Ghaffar said the digital pathology network would help accelerate diagnosis and improve early detection, noting that the proportion of cases detected in the first and second stages of disease has risen from 34 percent to 70 percent.
The minister described cooperation with Roche and AstraZeneca as a model of public-private partnership supporting Egypt’s healthcare modernization efforts, adding that the network could help position Egypt as a regional centre of excellence in medical diagnostics across the Middle East and Africa.
Following the signing ceremony, Abdel-Ghaffar toured laboratories at the Egyptian Centre for Disease Control to review the digital systems and artificial intelligence algorithms used by pathologists to analyze full histopathology slide images with high precision.
Egypt has expanded several large-scale digital and early-detection initiatives in recent years as part of a broader push to modernize the healthcare system and improve diagnostic capacity nationwide.
The Presidential Women’s Health Initiative, launched in 2019, is one of the largest national screening programmes in the region.
The programme focuses primarily on early detection of breast cancer and chronic diseases, providing free screening and follow-up services through thousands of primary healthcare units across the country.
Millions of women have been screened under the initiative, which relies on digital medical records and integrated referral systems linking primary care units with specialized treatment centres.
Another major effort is the national healthcare digital transformation programme, which includes creating unified electronic medical records and integrating hospitals and laboratories into digital health platforms.
These systems allow physicians to share diagnostic data, imaging results, and laboratory test results across institutions, improving care coordination and reducing diagnostic delays.
Egypt has also invested in a national laboratory and disease surveillance infrastructure, including the establishment of the Egyptian Centre for Disease Control (EGYCDC), designed to strengthen epidemiological monitoring, laboratory networks, and rapid response capabilities. The centre forms a core part of Egypt’s strategy to centralize diagnostic data and supports research and advanced testing.
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