Our Mission
The Swiss Digital Pathology Initiative (SDPI) is dedicated to creating a unified national network for digital pathology (DP) images and data. Our work is geared towards providing standardized, cleaned, and coded pathology data to researchers by leveraging the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) and BioMedIT infrastructure.
We’re bringing Switzerland to the forefront of biomedical research in the digital era.
Meeting the need
for a Swiss-based research infrastructure
While the SPHN has made significant progress towards providing access to health-related data in Switzerland, there remains a need for a national research infrastructure specifically tailored to support DP research. SDPI is working to establish a unique national network comprising of university, cantonal, and private hospitals. This network will harness the full potential of digital pathology for research and clinical workflows, fostering collaboration and innovation across the Swiss healthcare landscape. Starting with 1 million slides collected from 2025 to 2028, the SDPI registry will continue to expand at a rate of 100,000 samples per year. It will encompass digital image data from both human and animal samples, covering a wide range of diseases including various cancers (neoplastic), as well as inflammatory, infectious, and degenerative diseases (non-neoplastic).
Accessibility
The registry will be easily accessible to researchers, facilitating the seamless exchange of data and collaboration.
Decentralization
SDPI's infrastructure will be decentralized, ensuring broader accessibility and enhancing data security.
Patient Privacy
Ethical protocols will be strictly adhered to, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of patient data.
Utilization of BioMedIT
SDPI will leverage existing BioMedIT nodes, optimizing infrastructure utilization and enhancing scalability.
SDPI will revolutionize digital pathology research in Switzerland by providing researchers with the tools and infrastructure needed to advance healthcare and medical science.
The
Road Map
Work Packages (WP)
- WP1 will establish SDPI Governance and Management Structure.
- WP2 will establish SDPI in line with FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability), enabling integration of pathology data with SPHN clinical data sets at the partner hospital’s Research Data Service Center (RDSC).
- WP3 will establish and maintain SDPI data storage on the BioMedIT network.
- WP4 will establish a centralized registry enabling researcher-initiated DP data queries and instantiation of research cohorts supported by annotation tools and data analysis capabilities.
- WP5 will develop and deliver the SDPI sustainability plan.
Implementing SDPI
Phase I:
Project Setup & Governance
Draft and adopt project implementation plan and governance framework
Phase II:
Analysis of Swiss Digital Pathology Landscape
Discover unique opportunities within the existing network
Phase III:
SDPI MVP and SPHN Integration - Design
Define and decide on digital pathology data source infrastructure, format, meta-data annotations process. Define Integration design, data storage, and data access use cases for SDPI registry with SPHN.
Phase IV:
SDPI MVP and SPHN Integration - Build
Set-up scanning infrastructure, teams, implement data annotations and digital processes at Partner Institutions. Implement integration and user access to SDPI registry with SPHN.
Impacts
of SDPI
Expands existing SPHN datasets with cleaned and coded digital pathology (DP) data
Facilitates the creation of large multi-site patient cohorts for translational biomedical research and clinical trials
Supports the development and implementation of tools aimed at increasing diagnostic efficiency, quality, and patient safety
Promotes the development and utilization of AI solutions in health sciences for improved patient diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy response prediction
Establishes a consortium comprising all five Swiss university hospitals, Vetsuisse, and key stakeholders from academia, research, and industry