• 52North is a medtech startup based in Cambridge that is trying to improve health care for people with cancer.
• The company has created new tools that allow doctors to more accurately keep track of patient care and wellbeing.
• The startup has just raised £4.72 million investment in a funding round led by KHP Ventures and Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Co.

Website: www.52north.health

What is 52North?

52North is a Cambridge-based medtech company founded in 2018 that is helping to improve oncology care.

Their technology is designed to serve everyone involved in the care process, including the people living with the disease, carers, doctors, paramedics and nurses.

By working closely with patients to understand what they need, 52North are developing tools that help provide the safest, most innovative solutions to patient care.

Their hero product, the Neutrocheck® has gained widespread praise for helping to reduce A&E wait times. As cancer patients who feel unwell are currently told to go to A&E, this means that doctors end up fighting busy waiting rooms, when some of them don’t necessarily need to go to get the care they need.

Their tech allows doctors to more clearly see which patients need urgent care, helping them make quicker and more impactful decisions.

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What Makes 52North Unique?

52North is unique because its tools not only exist to help patients get the care they need, but are also designed to help the NHS cut down wait times, reduce costs and give better urgent care.

Their patient-centric tech means that they truly understand what their customer base needs, allowing them to be more informed about their clinical health at home.

All 3 of their products are designed to make patient care more personalised, more accurate and more accessible to the masses. In fact, the Neutrocheck® programme was given ‘breakthrough status’ by the UK Government under its Innovative Devices Access Pathway earlier this year – showing how pivotal it could be to the national health service.

Is There A Market For Oncology-Focused Medtech Companies?

The oncology medtech market is growing very quickly. According to Macmillan, around 167,000 people die from cancer every year in the UK, and every year stats show an increase in people being diagnosed with the disease.

Globally, cancer is the second leading cause of death.

With the National Health Service (NHS) already struggling with busy waiting rooms and A&E waiting times of up to 4 hours, tech that can help reduce this is massively in demand.

Technologies like those provided by 52North not only help doctors work out which patients they most urgently need to care for, but also help to cut costs by only giving urgent care to those who need it. For this reason, it’s a business very well placed for the future of healthcare, which makes it unsurprising that the company has just had such a successful funding round.

What Key Products Does 52North Have?

52North has developed 3 products so far, these include:

Neutrocheck®

A low-cost, at-home finger-prick blood test and app to test patients for neutropenic sepsis. This is one of the most fatal side-effects of chemotherapy treatment and usually needs quick antibiotic treatment to stop it becoming fatal.

Currently, patients are told to go to A&E if they feel unwell in case they have NS. This low-cost and quick test allows patients to only go to A&E when it’s urgent, lowering waiting times and getting them the care they need quickly.

Aster™ Platform

A low-cost, portable device that can measure key biomarkers for patient monitoring.

ACORN™

An app for patient communication that allows doctors to track symptoms, manage calls and make communication easier.