Remote cancer care device start-up raises £1m in first round

52 North Health, a UK and US-based medtech start-up, has raised £1 million in its first round of funding from leading UK and European specialist investors. 

The round was led by Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, with participation from Crista Galli Ventures, King’s Health Partners MedTech Innovations, Meltwind, Milltrust Ventures and several angels.

52 North is developing the NeutroCheck: a fully-integrated clinical, AI and medical device-based system for people living with cancer. The NeutroCheck is a point-of-care medical device which can be used by patients outside of hospital to monitor their risk of neutropenic sepsis, a potentially life-threatening complication of chemotherapy. By enabling at-home monitoring, the NeutroCheck enables significant improvements in health outcomes, quality of life and safety and, as a low-cost device, it is also designed to be accessible to improve health equality, as cancer patients from lower socio-economic backgrounds are disproportionately affected by needing to attend hospital urgently.

In addition, 52 North’s digital platform uses AI to better predict patient risk and outcomes and is intended to have a huge impact on the way healthcare professionals treat patients.

Taking its name from the GPS coordinates of Cambridge, where it was founded in 2018, 52 North is on a mission to reinvent the healthcare journey by creating affordable and patient-centred solutions.

The business is led by a formidable team of multi-disciplinary sector experts, including former lawyer and business development professional Umaima Ahmad (CEO), consultant oncologist Dr Saif Ahmad (chief scientific and medical officer), data scientist and assistant professor at the University of Cambridge Dr Mireia Crispin-Ortuzar (chief digital officer) and Harvard-based biosensor engineer Dr Nicole Weckman (technology advisor). With an 85% female team, 52 North is also proud to be challenging the status quo in STEM.

The investment will be used to take the NeutroCheck device through clinical trials in the UK, as well as to deliver on strategic partnerships with key partners including the UK Sepsis Trust and Macmillan Cancer Support, in order to define a new clinical pathway for treating suspected neutropenic sepsis, and to ensure people living with disease continue to be at the heart of the product life-cycle.

Umaima Ahmad, CEO and co-founder of 52 North Health, said: “We are delighted to have the support of excellent investors who are aligned with our values. With the advent of personalised medicine and an increasingly decentralised healthcare system – a need accelerated by the pandemic – many existing care pathways are no longer fit-for-purpose. In addition, the digitisation of healthcare can often exacerbate health inequality. We are focused on reinventing the healthcare journey for all patients across the globe, keeping health equity and improved health outcomes at the heart of our work. We are doing this through building solutions that are affordable, cutting-edge, and built around people living with disease. We are grateful to the dozens of people living with disease who have volunteered their time to engage with our product life cycle.”

Dr Nicole Weckman, technology advisor and co-founder, added: "The level of care that people can access is impacted by many factors including where they live, their ethnicity, gender and level of education. This simply should not be the case and health inequality is recognised as one of the key issues in the NHS Long Term Plan. We are proud to be keeping this at the heart of our solutions, combining technology with patient and clinician input and key human values, to improve health outcomes, because this is the future of healthcare."