News

Patients in England are set to benefit from a new cancer diagnostic test after PinPoint Data Science received SBRI Healthcare funding, thanks to support from the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN and the wider AHSN Network.  

SBRI Healthcare, in partnership with the NHS Cancer Programme and the Accelerated Access Collaborative, has awarded a share of £9million in funding to eight winning innovators to help them further develop and deploy their late stage innovations to the frontline of cancer detection and diagnosis. 

PinPoint’s artificial intelligence cancer detection test allows clinicians to ‘red flag’ high-risk patients and has been validated in retrospective assessments of 147,000 patients. It was first introduced in Leeds following a collaboration with the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN, the Leeds Academic Health Partnership, the West Yorkshire Cancer Alliance and the University of Leeds. 

Thanks to this latest funding, the test is being rolled-out across other areas in England with support from the AHSN Network, Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN and the Innovation Agency.  

Dr Neville Young, Director of Enterprise and Innovation at the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN, said: “Having worked with PinPoint from the very early stages with the Leeds Academic Health Partnership – helping them to establish their initial partnership with the West Yorkshire Cancer Alliance and the University of Leeds – this SBRI funding is really great news for cancer care across the country.   

“This bid will look to work with five Cancer Alliances, and a number of trusts to set up the infrastructure and processes needed to ‘switch on’ this cancer risk detection test within health systems. This test has huge potential to not only alleviate pressures on health services and elective recovery, but reduce the anxiety of many thousands of patients who under-go cancer diagnostic tests each year.  

“PinPoint has huge transformational potential and by collaborating with colleagues from other AHSNs, we can really demonstrate how quickly health innovations can be adopted and spread within care systems when you bring industry, academia and the health sector together.” 

The funding award is part of the first ever Cancer Programme which launched in March 2021 and attracted 51 applications from the open market. A second competition call is planned for the spring of 2022, continuing the series of multi-million pound funding calls, supporting the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions by fast-tracking high quality cancer innovations.  

Full details on the competition winners and their innovations can be read on the SBRI Healthcare website.