52North

52North is a Cambridge University spinout on a mission to reinvent the healthcare journey for cancer patients. The company was founded in 2018 by husband-and-wife team Dr. Saif Ahmad and Umaima Ahmad, taking its name from the GPS coordinates of Cambridge where it was born. It addresses a critical gap in oncology care: the management of neutropenic sepsis, a potentially life-threatening complication of chemotherapy that sends hundreds of thousands of cancer patients to A&E each year, half of whom turn out not to be at risk.

52North's flagship product, Neutrocheck®, is a low-cost, finger-prick blood test and app that patients can use at home to monitor their risk of neutropenic sepsis without making a hospital visit. The system integrates clinical assessment, AI-driven risk prediction, and a medical device into a single platform, enabling decentralised clinical decision-making that improves both patient outcomes and NHS efficiency. The company is also developing ACORN™, an AI-powered digital platform for remote triaging of acute oncology care, funded by NIHR.

In December 2024, 52North closed a landmark $6 million funding round co-led by KHP Ventures and Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Co. — the first UK–US hospital VC co-led deal of its kind — with participation from Cancer Research Horizons, Cambridge Enterprise, Macmillan Cancer Support, and others. Neutrocheck® has been granted breakthrough device status under the UK Government's Innovative Devices Access Pathway, and the company has been named MedTech Company of the Year 2023 by Cambridge Independent. 52North was also selected for Phase Two of NATO DIANA's accelerator programme.