Umaima Ahmad

Umaima Ahmad is a British-Pakistani entrepreneur and life sciences executive who co-founded Cambridge-based 52 North Health with the mission of reinventing the healthcare journey for cancer patients. She studied at the University of Cambridge, earning an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise, and previously held business development and legal positions at AstraZeneca and Abcam — giving her a rare combination of scientific, commercial, and regulatory insight that she has channelled into building a patient-centred medical technology company.

Ahmad co-founded 52 North Health in 2018 alongside Dr. Saif Ahmad, Dr. Mireia Crispin-Ortuzar, and Dr. Nicole Weckman, following the company's origins in the University of Cambridge's prestigious Postdoc Business Plan Competition. As CEO, she has led the company from an early-stage research project into a NATO DIANA-selected innovator, raising over $7.8 million in funding from investors including Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise, KHP Ventures, Cancer Research Horizons, and Macmillan Cancer Support. Her vision is that digitisation of healthcare must not come at the cost of health equity — a principle she has embedded at the heart of 52 North's product design.

52 North Health's flagship product, the NeutroCheck® device, is a low-cost, finger-prick, at-home test that allows cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy to rapidly assess their risk of neutropenic sepsis — a life-threatening complication that kills three people in England and Wales every day. By enabling at-home monitoring, the device reduces unnecessary and distressing emergency hospital visits while ensuring high-risk patients receive timely treatment. The company is now expanding its technology into defence applications via NATO DIANA, adapting its lateral flow platform for rapid detection of acute radiation sickness in emergency scenarios.