Times Higher Education Awards 2026 – SKINTEL® shortlisted for Research Project of the Year: STEM

I am delighted that SKINTEL® has been shortlisted for Research Project of the Year: STEM at the Times Higher Education Awards 2026, known as “the Oscars of Higher Education”.

SKINTEL® shortlisted for Research Project of the Year: STEM

Essex researchers have worked with Check4Cancer to develop SKINTEL®, an AI-assisted tool designed to improve skin cancer detection amid rising cases, a shortage of dermatologists, and long NHS waiting lists.

Initially launched through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership, SKINTEL® is led by Dr Haider Raza and Professor Gordon Wishart.

The project analysed more than 79,000 skin lesions using dermoscopic images and patient data collected since 2015. The team then identified seven key risk factors, including age, family history, and hair colour, and combined these into a novel skin cancer risk score. Adding this score to image analysis improved the AI model’s specificity by 11%, helping reduce false positives.

SKINTEL® can detect suspicious lesions with 99% accuracy, enabling earlier diagnosis while reducing unnecessary recalls, biopsies, and follow-up appointments.

Dr Raza, from the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, said:

“I am absolutely delighted that SKINTEL® has been shortlisted for the Times Higher Education STEM Research Project of the Year Award. What makes this recognition particularly special is that the project demonstrates how academic AI research can be translated into technology with the potential to make a real difference to patients.

“Through our partnership with Check4Cancer and support from Innovate UK, we have brought together AI expertise, clinical knowledge and real-world data to develop a system capable of supporting faster and more effective skin cancer triage.

“This recognition belongs to the entire team, particularly Dr Shafiqul Islam, Professor Gordon Wishart, and Professor John Gan, whose contributions have been instrumental to the project’s success. I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved together and excited about the next stage of translating this research into wider clinical impact.”

Professor Gordon Wishart, CEO of Check4Cancer and Visiting Professor at Essex, added:

“At Check4Cancer, we recognised at an early stage that clinicians should be involved in the development of medical AI and, together with our large curated dataset of images and clinical metadata, our partnership with the University of Essex has delivered a high-performance AI model for skin cancer detection that can help mitigate the global shortages of dermatologists”.

Read the University of Essex announcement.