Overview

Cancer pathways in the South West are under pressure from rising demand and capacity limitations. Patients often face delays, fragmented care and insufficient post-treatment support, particularly in rural and coastal areas where travel challenges reduce access to hospital-based care or rehabilitation services.   

In 2024, Health Innovation South West launched its Cancer Innovation Challenge – a programme providing evaluation and innovation support to enable innovators to understand the conditions for success in scaling and spreading their innovation.  

Testing innovations in real-world settings, rather than in controlled pilots, ensures that findings reflect real operational and patient-facing challenges. Real world evaluations are an important step in an innovation’s journey. They offer evidence building of the impact of innovations and can support implementation. 

The innovation support covered a range of topics that were tailored to the needs and interested of the innovators. Activities included developing and refining value propositions and effective communication tools, coaching, social value advice and guidance such as undertaking health equity assessments and developing skills in net zero planning.

Innovators also received support exploring new customer markets, brokering connections with NHS partners and bid writing support to explore scaling opportunities in the South West and beyond.  

 

The innovators  

After a competitive application process, we selected three innovator-implementation site teams working in the field of cancer in the South West region that supported the transition from analogue to digital:  

Lucida Medical & Somerset NHS Foundation Trust – implementing  Lucida Pi, a radiology AI support tool for faster and more accurate prostate cancer MRI interpretation.  

Gentle Recovery & Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust – an online holistic rehabilitation programme supporting women during and post breast cancer treatment to rebuild strength, confidence and wellbeing  

MySunrise & Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust – a digital app to streamline preassessment and to help and empower patients prepare for Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) and attend pre-assessments virtually. 

With funding from the UK Office for Life Sciences, Lucida Medical and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, Gentle Recovery and Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, and MySunrise and Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, each received a real-world evaluation delivered by our Evaluation & Learning experts. The innovators received innovation support from our Innovation team experts. 

 

Challenge impact  

Evidence from our evaluations, published in 2025, show a positive impact on patient experience across treatment, outcomes, administration, clinical capacity and pathways, and person-centred care.  

 

Pi (Lucida Medical)  

Our evaluation shows Pi software has strong accuracy when predicting prostate cancer in patients at Musgrove Park Hospital and supports wait times for biopsy among those at greatest risk of cancer.  

Pi is supporting radiologists by prioritising cases for MRI reporting, saving time with automated analyses, and validating interpretations. 

Our evaluation also identifies negative impacts on nurse time, alongside  common implementation challenges, such as ongoing data infrastructure, and current limitations of the technology.  

“The support from the Cancer Innovation Challenge has been critical in generating the evidence to show how Pi™ can best support the delivery of their 28-day prostate cancer pathway. This work has supported the business case for scale and spread of Pi™ across the NHS and has already led to engagement with other NHS Trusts who are very keen to see the results.” 

Lucy Davies, VP of Clinical, Lucida Medical  

Read the Lucida Pi evaluation in full and learn more about our work to support the spread and scale of Pi.  

 

Gentle Recovery 

We worked with founder India Goodheram to understand the impact that Gentle Recovery has on patients who have had breast cancer, through a mixed-methods evaluation comprising interviews and surveys.  

The evaluation focused on a pilot of Gentle Recovery among breast cancer patients at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust in 2024. Most patients surveyed said they felt their motivation to make positive shifts in their life had changed. Using the Gentle Recovery programme has improved their physical and psychological wellbeing, and their knowledge of tools to enhance resilience and recovery, especially valuable in rural communities with limited access to in-person rehabilitation.  

“The early results and testimonials were both encouraging and inspiring, providing strong evidence of the benefits Gentle Recovery can offer. This data will be crucial in engaging hospitals who may wish to share the programme with their patients, as well as reassuring women considering joining privately.” 

India Gooderham, Founder of Gentle Recovery 

Read the evaluation in full and learn more about our work with Gentle Recovery. 

 

MySunrise Pre-assessment Tools 

Our evaluation suggests MySunrise pre-assessment tools are supporting outcomes at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust across three levels: patients and their families; staff and services; and the wider system.  

Digitising the pre-assessment process for Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy reduces clinical time by one hour per patient, enabling the service to better meet rising demands and improve patient experiences and readiness by providing the information they need at their fingertips. 

“[The Cancer Innovation Challenge] has given us a chance to step back and bring in an independent focussed evaluation of our work, shining a light on where we have realised success but also on the opportunities to improve our offer. The guidance around how we can better realise health inequalities and net zero benefits from our platform offer has also been very helpful.” 

George Brighton, GP, Co-Founder, Director & Clinical Safety Officer, MySunrise 

Read the MySunrise evaluation in full and learn more about our work with MySunrise.  

 

Spread and scale  

The results of our evaluations are informing business cases for scale and spread, engagement with Integrated Care Boards for adoption planning, and identifying further innovation needs in cancer care.   

The innovators have received advice and guidance to explore opportunities in the South West region and scale beyond region. Innovators have also received coaching, developed or revised value propositions, undertaken health equity assessments, developed skills in net zero planning and explored new customer markets.  

Two of the three innovators have secured onward funding during our time working together, generating economic growth and creating jobs. 

Opportunities remain open for additional trusts and systems to test or adopt these tools, and from partners who can support spread and scale.