The Christie named as the world’s most technologically advanced cancer centre outside of North America - Professor Chris Harrison

Professor Chris Harrison, Executive Medical Director

Professor Chris Harrison

There is a lot of building work going on at The Christie at the moment and we are also investing a lot of money in new technology. 

Anyone who is familiar with our main site in Withington will know that the landscape has changed considerably in the last 10 years and the work we have done is now paying dividends.

I was delighted to find out recently that The Christie has been named as the world’s most technologically advanced cancer centre outside of North America according to the web site Top Masters in Healthcare. It has painstakingly researched 100 top cancer centres across the world and ranked them according to the level of cutting edge technology available for treatment and diagnosis. You can read more about this here.

Our technology not only helps us provide great medical care but also helps maintain the first rate experience of care reported by our patients.  

Unsurprisingly the centres ranked top are the major US centres such as Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York and MD Anderson in Texas. However, the technology at The Christie including our cutting edge radiotherapy, chemotherapy centres and mobile delivery, advanced imaging techniques, brachytherapy, robotic surgery, developing integrated procedures unit, the developing proton beam centre and our integrated clinical trials unit put us 9th in the world and top ranked outside North America.  

This confirms previous findings that The Christie has all eight of the technologies identified by The US top hospital programme as being the hallmarks of a world leading cancer centre. These include our advanced radiotherapy capability, PET scanning and the ability to undertake robotic surgery. 

Of course availability of cutting edge technology is only one aspect of providing world class cancer care but surely it has to be one of the ingredients needed to provide world class care. The gold standard of a world class service must be the outcomes of care for the people we serve in communities across England and the quality of experience of that care. 


No technology can completely overcome the difficulties of treating cancer once it has spread and so we need to continue to find ways to allow cancer to be diagnosed early - this is what the new cancer vanguard in Manchester is working on. That said, it is comforting to know that right here in Manchester we have some of the best facilities in the world to diagnose and treat cancer.