The Cancer Alliance Innovation Team works in collaboration with industry, our place-based and acute trust colleagues, patients, Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber and with the National Cancer Innovation Programme to bring together local and nationally sponsored innovation projects into the system with the aim of enabling:
- Testing and evaluation of prioritised innovations in a ‘real world’ setting
- Accelerated roll-out of prioritised innovations
There is a particular focus on improving early diagnosis through risk assessment and new diagnostic techniques.
NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Call
The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance supports the NHS Cancer Programme open call, supported by the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare and the Accelerated Access Collaborative playing a key role in enabling the spread and adoption of successful projects.
To date the Cancer Alliance has collaborated with the following companies on innovation projects that improve the early detection and diagnosis of cancer:
Appt Health - Increasing the uptake of national screening programmes with smart targeting of low-uptake subgroups
Appt Health is an automated patient engagement platform that boosts cancer screening uptake through personalised, behaviourally informed outreach. The project focuses on increasing cervical and lung screening attendance in groups where uptake is lower, assisted by digital technology. It uses data-driven targeting, co-designed messaging, and streamlined booking to reduce inequalities and support earlier diagnosis.
The University of Manchester and NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre – SEARCH: Implementing and Evaluating Lung Cancer Screening for high-risk Hodgkin Lymphoma survivors within the NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme
SEARCH is a national multicentre project aimed at implementing and evaluating extended eligibility criteria and a modified risk calculator for screening of high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma survivors within the NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme
Lucida Medical - AI-assisted prostate MRI for improving early detection and diagnostic efficiency of prostate cancer within the NHS
Pi™ is AI-based medical software that automatically analyses MRI scans for prostate cancer, the UK’s most common cancer in men. Pi™ will be used by hospitals to improve accuracy and efficiency, help to quickly decide which patients need further investigations like a biopsy, and pilot a same-day biopsy service, enabling much faster diagnosis.
The PinPoint Test is a decision support tool for clinicians, a blood test which can be used for patients on an urgent referral/two week wait pathway to determine the probability of them having cancer.
The test uses machine learning to combine results from multiple blood analytes with basic patient information. This allows clinicians to easily identify those patients who should be further investigated by specialists for cancer diagnosis, red flagging particularly urgent cases and identifying those who can be safely investigated for other possible causes of their symptoms.
The Cancer Alliance has supported the service evaluation of the test
Colon Capsule Endoscopy (CCE) is a new procedure which offers an alternative to colonoscopy for some patients
Cytosponge is a new device which can be used to investigate upper gastro- intestinal symptoms that might be cancer and to identify those most in need of urgent treatment.
The Cancer Alliance has supported implementation pilots in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance Innovation Award Scheme (IAS)
The Cancer Alliance has launched its Innovation competition 2026/27 in collaboration with the Yorkshire and Humber Innovation Network.
The Innovation Award Scheme is an annual non-recurrent, revenue-only, financial awards scheme which seeks to:
- Promote innovation in cancer care
- Encourage the adoption, acceleration, and deployment of best practice
- Support the strategic objectives of the Cancer Alliance
- Ensure that available cancer transformation funding responds to needs identified locally, as well as those taken from policy priorities nationally
- Create opportunities to improve early diagnosis and patient experience by reducing health inequalities in line with the NHS Long Term Plan
This year the scheme will align to the National Cancer Plan and West Yorkshire and Harrogate population priorities, with a focus on innovation projects that support:
- Digital transformation
- Improving experience of cancer care to address health inequalities in black and minority ethnic communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, people affected by serious mental illness and people affected by learning difficulties
- Improving psychosocial support for parents and families with a young person diagnosed with cancer
- Exploring innovative and inclusive methods for gathering meaningful Quality of Life feedback from communities that are traditionally under‑represented or seldom heard communities
- Novel use of genomic testing for case-finding purposes, diagnostics and point of care testing to accelerate cancer pathways, case-finding approaches for rarer cancers other than pancreatic
For funding competition guidance click here
Find the application form here
Examples of supported projects include:
Paediatric Oncology Ambulatory Care – involving children and young people in Yorkshire with cancer benefiting from chemotherapy at home thanks to innovations at Leeds Children’s Hospital. The cancer patients are some of the youngest in the UK to benefit from home chemotherapy.
INITIATE: Improving liver cancer radiotherapy using advanced MRI and AI Techniques - Funding from the Cancer Alliance enabled the delivery of cutting-edge technological initiatives to improve radiotherapy for patients with brain and liver cancer - in partnership with tech company Philips and the Leeds Cancer Centre.
Skin Analytics – DERM AI - deploying DERM AI to triage suspected skin cancer referrals safely and efficiently, allowing the Trust to evaluate the impact, and develop a business case, if the pilot is proving to generate improvements in the pathway: https:/
The Innovation Programme Manager is Helen Ryan.
For more information, email:
