130+ innovators and leaders within the NHS Cancer community attended the NHS Cancer Programme Innovation in the Early Diagnosis of Cancer networking event on 12 February 2025 at BMA House.
The event, organised by SBRI Healthcare and the NHS Cancer Programme team, was an opportunity for the 14 companies supported by the NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Call, and 6 companies from the OLS Cancer Healthcare Goals Programme, to showcase their work, share experiences and build new connections. Representatives from NHS England’s 21 Cancer Alliances who provide care locally also attended and colleagues from the Health Innovation Network.
The NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Call focuses on improving the early detection and diagnosis of cancer to benefit patients. Through two competitions, £25m+ has been invested in 14 innovations across 369 sites, with 160,000+ patients involved in pilots to date.
The companies supported are driving forward innovations that help tackle cancers including hepatocellular carcinoma, breast, oesophageal, head and neck, bowel, ovarian, skin, pancreatic, bile duct, and brain cancer, and work with communities and patients including those with Lynch Syndrome and Li Fraumeni syndrome who have a higher likelihood of developing cancer.
The event was opened by Professor Richard Gilbertson, Chair of the NHS England Innovation Expert Advisory Group, and Professor Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer and Chair of the Office for Life Sciences Cancer Goals, followed by case studies from Cyted Health and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust - Whole-body MRI project on screening and proactive case finding, chaired by Dr Jodie Moffat, Deputy Director, Policy and Strategy, NHS Cancer Programme, NHS England.
Mrs Sally Rickard, Director, Wessex Cancer Alliance then chaired a case studies session on improving pathways with Endoscope-I and The Institute of Cancer Research - BRCA-DIRECT project.
Dr Neville Young, Director of Enterprise and Innovation, Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber followed chairing a panel discussion on improving pathways with Open Medical, Modality Partnership, Skin Analytics, the University of Manchester/Elecsys®GAAD project and Mrs Emily Bryant, Transformation Lead for Earlier Diagnosis at NHS England.
After networking we heard fire pitches from up and coming projects funded as part of NIHR i4i/OLS Cancer Healthcare Goals Programme, introduced by Dr Colin Wilson, Deputy Director for Research Infrastructure at OLS: Imperial - PANACEA: PAN Alimentary Cancer Exhaled breath Analysis, Optellum Ltd - CLEAREST: Clinical evaluation of lung cancer detection and diagnosis software, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust - Integration of the PRODICT ™ test into the prostate cancer risk pathway, XGENERA Ltd - miONCO-Dx : A novel multi cancer early diagnostic test, University of Southampton, and Proteotype Diagnostics Ltd - Cost-effective multi-cancer early detection by measuring patient plasma amino acid cross sections with the Enlighten test, Imperial - Artificial Intelligence to support cancer early diagnosis in general practice (AI-DIP).
A consultation on the future of innovation concluded the day followed by networking.
Thank you to everyone who attended and made the event such a success. A copy of the programme can be found here.