Early cancer diagnosis is a national priority but delivering it at scale remains challenging.
Diagnosing cancer at stages 1 and 2 leads to more treatment options, better outcomes and improved survival. Yet achieving this at scale remains difficult. Rising demand, workforce pressures, fragmented pathways and persistent inequalities continue to slow progress across the NHS.
This is not just a clinical challenge. It requires joined-up systems, digital tools that work in practice, and services designed around real patient and community needs. Too often, promising innovations struggle to move beyond pilots or fail to align with the realities of frontline care. Closing this gap is critical if early diagnosis is to become routine.
At UCLPartners, accelerating early cancer diagnosis across North Central London (NCL) and North East London (NEL) is one of our strategic priorities. We are working at the intersection of systems, innovators, clinicians and communities to turn ambition into delivery at scale.
What we offer: System-led innovation that delivers
We act as an innovation strategy and delivery partner to health systems, helping them identify priority challenges, deploy innovation safely and at pace, and build the evidence needed for scale. Our starting point is always patient and system need, not technology, ensuring solutions genuinely improve pathways and patient outcomes.
Working within the national Health Innovation Network and alongside Cancer Alliances, we share learning across regions while remaining grounded in local delivery. Our role spans strategy through to implementation, ensuring innovation works for staff and patients and can be sustained over time.
We bring together clinical leadership, innovation expertise, operational insight, independent evaluation and patient and public involvement to support lasting change.
Strategic delivery partners to North Central and North East London Cancer Alliances
We work side by side with NCL and NEL Cancer Alliances, shaping strategy and implementing change where it will have the greatest impact.
In NCL, we helped to develop the 2024/25 cancer strategy as part of our role as core delivery and strategic partners. This includes innovation programmes, Digital Fund support and joint grant development with innovators.
As the Managing Director of the NCL Cancer Alliance, Ali Malik, describes:
NCL Cancer Alliance are proud to be working increasingly closely with UCLPartners to help improve cancer outcomes in the region. Our work together includes the usage of AI to help identify patients at high risk of having lung cancer, in collaboration with Quantum Analytica, and our early diagnosis work is being led by a member of staff working across both teams, exemplifying the closeness of our partnership. Together, we will keep exploring new ways to introduce cutting-edge innovations to help improve cancer outcomes in NCL.
In NEL, we are an embedded innovation partner, driving strategic priorities including defining diagnostic challenges, identifying technologies to improve screening uptake, and providing independent evaluation of early detection initiatives.
Wayne Douglas, Programme Lead for Diagnosis and Treatment, NEL Cancer Alliance, said:
We are currently one of the top-performing Cancer Alliances in the country, based on national cancer standards. Working with UCLPartners is helping us build on this success and find even better ways to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment, with a clear focus on what matters most to patients. Together we are identifying and safely introducing new approaches and technologies into cancer care, evaluating their impact, and reducing health inequalities across NEL, one of the most diverse communities in the country.
Supporting innovators to scale with confidence
We support innovators to navigate NHS adoption, identify funding opportunities including SBRI and i4i, and scale solutions where they add most value. By connecting innovators with real system needs and clinical teams, we help move beyond pilots to meaningful deployment.
For example, our work with NCL Cancer Alliance focuses on the challenge of cancer screening. Currently the process can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, with very large numbers of people screened to find a relatively small number of cancers, making the process resource-intensive and potentially placing unnecessary burden on individuals at very low risk. To address this, NCL Cancer Alliance is working with researchers at Quantum Analytica to explore how AI could identify a broader range of factors linked to a higher likelihood of developing certain cancers, making case-finding more efficient. These insights can help design, and better target, screening and proactive case-finding programmes towards people with highest risk of specific cancers, increasing the chances of diagnosis at stages 1 and 2, when they are far more treatable, rather than at stages 3 and 4.
We are also proud to support a number of other innovators, including Hippo Labs and Appt Health, and match them to system partners and Cancer Alliance projects.
Sachin Gupta, CEO and Co-founder of Hippo Labs says:
UCLPartners has been supporting Hippo Labs to identify potential use cases in NEL and NCL. Thanks to this support, we connected with the North East London Cancer Alliance, who are now preparing to deploy Hippo Recaller services as part of several cancer screening campaigns in 2025/26. We were also introduced to North Central London Cancer Alliance, who will be implementing Hippo Recaller to support the early detection of bowel cancer.
Looking ahead: priorities for 2026
This year our focus is on moving from foundations to impact. We will be supporting the implementation and evaluation of digital cancer programmes, accelerating innovation aligned to Cancer Alliance strategies in NEL and NCL, and sharing our learnings.
The challenge is not a lack of innovation, but ensuring the right innovation reaches the right patients at the right time. By combining system insight, delivery expertise and meaningful partnership, we are building a health system where cancer is diagnosed earlier and faster, and people are supported throughout their journey.