Partnership gets £4.4m gov grant for better liver diagnostics

Perspectum has been awarded a multimillion pound UK government research grant (UKRI) with partners for the development of new technology to help save patients’ lives by diagnosing liver disease earlier.

The new partnership – with Manchester and Nottingham Universities, as well as Roche Diagnostics, GE Medical Systems and Jiva.AI – will accelerate development of AI solutions for liver disease diagnostics, in the hope of providing earlier and more accurate diagnoses.

Patients with liver disease often have no symptoms in the early stages and may not be diagnosed until later stages when liver damage is irreversible, and the risk of cancer has increased. Early diagnosis allows patients to be treated when disease is still reversible, helping to prevent progression to liver cancer.

Perspectum said it will integrate its state-of-the-art quantitative MRI technology, LiverMultiScan, into the Roche/GE NAVIFY clinical decision support platform to display the relevant diagnostic and patient data in a single holistic view. The combination of LiverMultiScan with AI will fundamentally change the way clinicians assess their patients’ liver health.

The project is supported with £4.4 million funding as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund on Enabling Integrated Diagnostics with Innovate UK and Cancer Research UK.

“We are delighted to be working with the world class team from Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and the consortium of partners on this groundbreaking project,” said

Dr Abdullahi Sheriff, Strategic Partnerships and Solutions leader at GE Healthcare UK and Ireland.

“We believe in the power of partnerships in improving health outcomes and the transformative potential this partnership has to improve the early identification and treatment of liver disease and cancers at scale in the UK.”