Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) welcomes the launch of the Zenith supercomputer in Cambridge. Recently created through funding from the Department for Science, Industry and Technology (DSIT), Zenith is the UK’s largest AI-for-science platform, designed to deliver AI-driven breakthroughs in areas including healthcare.
Launched this week at an event attended by Minister for Digital Government at DSIT, James Frith MP alongside more than 80 innovators, industry leaders and academics, Zenith is hosted by the University of Cambridge and increases Cambridge’s supercomputing power six-fold, placing the city at the forefront of AI innovation in the UK.
Applying this scale of computing power to healthcare has the potential to produce AI tools that could be used across the NHS to help improve cancer diagnosis, treatment selection, outcomes prediction, and licensed for use in new therapeutics development.
Zenith represents a significant step-up in our ability to improve healthcare through AI. In Cambridge, we will have the computing speed and power needed to make AI relevant to care at the scale of the NHS. It can help us to learn from the lived experiences of millions of patients to improve detection, diagnosis and treatment for the future. It won’t just shape how we treat patients but will help inform how we plan and deliver care.
I am hopeful that patients at Cambridge University Hospitals will be some of the first to benefit thanks to our close connections between discovery research and NHS care.
Dr Sarah Burge, director of clinical integration at CUH
The future Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital is being designed from the ground up with innovations like this in mind and will provide the ideal environment for the real-time translation of such AI discoveries into patient care.
Find out more about Sarah's thoughts on care at the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital in her thought leadership article: Bridging the gap between innovation and care in the fight against cancer
The new supercomputer will give researchers the ability to study health data on an unprecedented scale. For example, by harnessing data from millions of cancer cases Zenith could play a role in developing AI tools with the capability to guide patient care across the NHS.
A national collaboration, the AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, is working with the Zenith team to ensure the power of AI supercomputing can be deployed responsibly and securely within the NHS to maximise benefits for patients.
The launch of Zenith marks a major step forward in the UK’s mission to harness AI for science. By bringing together world‑class compute, research and industry expertise, we will unlock new discoveries in health, clean energy and the environment strengthening Britain’s position as a global leader in AI innovation.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DSIT and Cabinet Office, James Frith MP
Built with AMD and Dell Technologies, Zenith replaces Cambridge’s previous supercomputer, DAWN, which supported over 350 research projects for free as part of the national AI Research Resource (AIRR). This includes studies on cancer vaccines, and tumour targeting.
Learn more about the event and the role Zenith will play in areas such as energy and the environment from the University of Cambridge.