Unique networking leads digital battle on disease in North
Posted: 31st July 2020
A unique collaboration between the NHS and a widespread network of academic and industry partners is developing digital tools in hospitals in the North to help diagnose cancer and other diseases in a population of 3m people.
The Yorkshire & Humber AHSN helped support a bid co-ordinated by Associate Professor Darren Treanor on behalf of Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust and the University of Leeds. This resulted in NPIC – the Northern Pathology Imaging Co-operative – becoming one of five centres which obtained £10.1m from the government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund through UK Research and Innovation, plus £7m from partner companies.
The successful partnership bid embraces a network of nine NHS hospitals, seven universities, and 10 industry-leading medical technology companies. The AHSN continues to play a leadership role in the partnership through the place we have on its steering group.
NPIC has used this funding to put new digital pathology scanners into a network of northern NHS hospitals, including West Yorkshire and Harrogate hospitals. The technology will gather images for training AI systems, generating about 760,000 images per year, or approximately 1.2 petabytes of data.
The consortium is a globally-leading centre for applying artificial intelligence (AI) research to cancer diagnosis. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is a global leader in the area of digital pathology for cancer diagnosis, and has many close links with academic researchers.
Find out more about Leeds Teaching Hospials NHS Trust research