The problem
Across many African settings, cancer patients already lose time before diagnosis. When a biopsy, FNAC, or cytology sample is finally taken, the report may still take weeks or months because pathology services are centralised, specialist reporting capacity is limited, and regional facilities often lack digital pathology infrastructure.
Digital pathology can shorten this pathway by allowing slides to be captured closer to the patient and reviewed remotely. However, commercial whole-slide scanners remain expensive, difficult to service locally, and produce large image files that require reliable bandwidth, storage, and specialised viewing systems.
Kebeza’s clinic experience has shown that phone-assisted slide capture and clinician-led remote reporting can improve access in real-world settings. The next step is to move this work into a more secure, standardised, auditable, data-conscious, and scalable digital pathology workflow.
The solution
Kebeza Path Edge combines OpenFlexure-based slide imaging, secure remote pathology reporting, structured case management, and African pathology datasets for teaching, research, and AI model training.
Why OpenFlexure-based imaging
OpenFlexure-based microscopy gives Kebeza a practical route toward locally buildable, locally serviceable slide imaging infrastructure rather than relying only on expensive imported black-box scanners.
Kebeza is exploring collaboration with the OpenFlexure community while preparing a Uganda-based pilot suited to local clinical, technical, repair, and training realities.
Why data-conscious design matters
Whole-slide images are heavy. In African settings, bandwidth, storage, and internet reliability affect whether digital pathology can scale. Path Edge is being designed around practical edge capture, secure case transfer, and workflows that can work within real clinic and regional infrastructure constraints.
Current phase
Kebeza is preparing a Uganda-based pilot to locally build and validate an OpenFlexure-based pathology imaging workflow for slide capture, remote reporting, teaching, research implementation, and African pathology image dataset development.
Ground base
The pilot is grounded in Kebeza’s clinic systems, regional pathology access needs, same-day cytology support where feasible, remote pathology support experience, patient navigation, and cancer diagnostic implementation work.