Professor Nasir Rajpoot Showcases Groundbreaking AI Tool at New Zealand Cancer Conference

Professor Nasir Rajpoot, Director of the Tissue Image Analytics (TIA) Centre and Chair of Computational Pathology at the University of Warwick, attended The Cancer Society of New Zealand’s annual conference in March 2025.

During the event, he presented his team’s cutting-edge AI-powered diagnostic tool for colorectal cancer, currently undergoing clinical trials using data from 10 NHS hospitals and over 10,000 biopsy samples. The tool is designed to analyse colorectal biopsy images and automatically identify cases with no signs of cancer. In such instances, the biopsy does not require review by a pathologist, significantly reducing workload, expediting diagnosis, and saving resources. Patients can potentially receive an all-clear result within two hours.

While at the conference, Professor Rajpoot was interviewed by Sarah Catherall of the The New Zealand Listener. He remarked, “Decreasing the bowel cancer screening age is absolutely fantastic, but it does fill the pathologist with dread because they know all that increased workload is going to come to them. The only way that we can deal with these large workloads for pathology labs is get assistance from AI.”

Professor Rajpoot and his team at Histofy, a spinout of the TIA Centre, aim to roll out the diagnostic tool across the NHS by 2027, with aspirations to expand internationally.

During his visit, he also engaged in discussions with leaders from Awanui Labs about a potential pilot in New Zealand, with a particular focus on assessing the tool’s effectiveness across diverse populations, including Māori communities.

This conference provided an excellent platform to highlight the transformative research being carried out by the TIA Centre, helping to improve cancer diagnostics and care for patients both in the UK and globally.