Tune Insight selected to join the Swiss Digital Pathology Initiative
Tune Insight has been selected to play a role in the operational implementation of the Swiss Digital Pathology Initiative, in collaboration with foresite AG. This national infrastructure will enable Swiss researchers to better identify and exploit digital histology slide images, accelerating research in the field of digital pathology.
The Swiss Digital Pathology Initiative (SDPI) is entering a new chapter. Following a public tender for the provision of project management and registry development services, the SDPI will be continuing its collaboration with foresite AG and Tune Insight.
After an initial design and prototyping phase, the project is now moving into operational implementation and management. This will span 2026 through 2028 and include the development of the SDPI registry, its integration with the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN), the launch of initial pilots, and the gradual expansion of the network to include new Swiss healthcare facilities.
What is a digital histology slide?
To diagnose some diseases, notably cancers, pathologists analyze tissue samples. These samples are prepared then placed on small glass rectangles, called histology slides, that are traditionally observed under a microscope.
Today, these slides can be digitized at ultra-high resolution using specialized scanners. This converts them into detailed digital images (DICOM format) that professionals and researchers can look at on a screen and analyze using digital tools.
Each individual digital slide can represent an extremely large file, containing a significant amount of information about the cell and tissue structures.
Digital pathology is not as simple as just taking a photo of a sample. It transforms a physical slide into digitally-exploitable data that can be compared to other images and studied at scale.
Why collect so many images?
To develop new analysis tools, researchers need access to large volumes of high-quality images, accompanied by the data required to describe them.
These images can be used to develop, train, test, and validate machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence, for example.
These models can then help researchers:
- Detect subtle features the human eye struggles to see,
- Identify new biomarkers,
- Understand some diseases more accurately,
- Compare different patient profiles,
- Investigate how tissue appearance relates to diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment response.
Ultimately, this research could lead to more accurate diagnoses, better prediction of the progression of certain diseases, and support even more personalized treatment. At this stage, however, the SDPI remains primarily a research infrastructure. Its insights can then power clinical innovation and help improve patient care at a later point.
For this work to be reliable, models must be developed using sufficient data that is both varied and representative enough to be credible. But today, the images are spread across different facilities, stored in different environments, and described using formats that are not always consistent.
This is the problem that the SDPI aims to solve.
Building a national Swiss infrastructure for research
The Swiss Digital Pathology Initiative aims to develop a secure national registry of digital pathology images, gradually federating university, cantonal, and private hospitals across Switzerland.
Its objective is to ensure researchers know which images exist, and determine if they can meet the needs of a specific study, without having to contact each institution separately.
The SDPI has a target of collecting one million digital histology slides between 2025 and 2028. These images will be accompanied by the metadata required to describe them, for example the sample location, technical image characteristics, and type of scanner used.
The registry is more than a simple storage space. It should act as a gateway for learning about the available data, preparing a study, and organizing access requests.
Helping researchers find the relevant data: where Tune Insight comes in
For the SDPI, Tune Insight will mainly be involved in the pathway allowing researchers to identify and request access to the images that will be useful for their projects.
Using the cohort constructor integrated into the Tune Insight platform, a researchers will be able to define the criteria that correspond to their project: a specific pathology, a disease type, certain patient characteristics or specific image properties.
It should be noted that the DICOM files in the SDPI image registry will be completely stripped of metadata. The descriptive information associated with the images and the links that enable them to be found in the registry will remain in hospital databases. These databases will be federated using Tune Insight and SPHN infrastructures, with no data centralization.
A federated query is then run across hospital databases to identify the images that match the criteria and assess their availability, without metadata ever being moved or exposed.
This means that before they even start a study, researchers will be able to answer a critical question: “Do the images I need exist, and are they available within the network?”
Tune Insight has already developed and presented a first prototype for this experience that can be used to build a cohort, identify relevant images, and prepare a data access request.
Governing data access requests
Finding relevant images does not mean being able to use them immediately.
Strict rules apply to health data. Each project must comply with institutional authorizations, regulatory requirements, and the conditions defined by the facilities responsible for the data.
Once the relevant images have been identified, the researcher can then submit an access request, specifying the data required and the study context. This request will then be evaluated and subsequently accepted or refused by the competent authority.
Data may only be provided for analysis (in a secured environment) once authorization has been granted.
Tune Insight will participate to several key steps of this pathway:
- Searching for images based on specific criteria,
- Constituting a cohort,
- Formulating access requests,
- Managing the authorization process,
- Providing the authorized data in the defined research environment.
Tune Insight’s platform is not designed to carry out all image analyses itself. Its job is to allow researchers to find the data they need, obtain the relevant authorizations, and then exploit the data using suitable scientific tools or machine learning models.
Building on Switzerland’s secure infrastructures
The SDPI will also leverage the standards and infrastructures already established by the Swiss Personalized Health Network.
One of the SPHN’s key priorities is standardizing health data, so that Swiss institutions can collaborate more easily. In the context of the SDPI, its models will be enhanced to better handle the specificities of digital histology slides and the metadata needed to describe them.
This continuity is a major plus for Tune Insight. Its platform is already used to support collaboration between university and cantonal hospitals within the SPHN ecosystem, making the company a trusted technological partner for the SDPI.
A new infrastructure for Swiss research
By making it easier to find and access large volumes of digital histology slides, the SDPI will allow research teams to launch multicenter projects more easily, and work with richer, more representative data.
For Tune Insight, being selected to support the initiative marks the next stage in the development of infrastructures that allow facilities to better exploit their health data, without compromising on robust governance of how they are accessed and used.
After clinical, genomic, and structured data, Tune Insight is now expanding its expertise to include a new category of particularly complex and strategic data: digital pathology images.
A step forward that will first accelerate research and, in time, help delivery more precise diagnoses and ever more personalized medicine.
