In 2025, ADJ Medical Services Ltd (t/a ADJ Medical) were appointed by HAIFU Medical Technology as their exclusive UK distributors. We recently spoke with the UK-based company to learn more about how this innovative technology is being used in the region. At which UK hospitals are Haifu’s machines currently in use? We are currently tasked to promote the JC200 and JC300 devices. Currently, the only hospital in the UK with a HAIFU device is The Churchill Hospital in Oxford, mainly for research and development purposes but we are in discussion with a number of other sites, both NHS and private. Which health conditions or diseases is your technology used for? We have secured CE approval, and the device is being used worldwide for a variety of indications including adenomyosis, uterine fibroids (NICE and FIGO), breast fibroadenoma, as well as a number of soft tissue tumours, liver tumours, breast tumours, bone tumours, and pancreatic tumours. Clinical research is continuing to develop these indications and more. Chongqing Haifu’s JC200 and JC300 Devices What are the current challenges in the UK when it comes to patient access to focused ultrasound treatment and how might some of these be overcome? The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NICE), the organisation that decides which treatments get provided on the NHS, issued guidance for uterine fibroids but availability remains limited. The establishment of a HIFU service does require some considerable investment, although we have developed a charge per use plan which readily facilitates easier adoption and overcomes existing capital expense barriers. We can offer a plan for installation whereby treatment costs are reduced to a few hundred pounds per case, compared with the thousands of pounds currently expended. Tell us about any interesting current or planned clinical studies The team at Oxford University, led by Professor David Cranston, are deeply involved in a range of clinical studies to support existing indications and to develop more. Our equipment is currently multifaceted but we hope it will ultimately provide the ‘go-to’ treatment option for a significant range of cancers and other illnesses. What are your aspirations in the UK? Our mission is to enable ALL patients requiring treatment to benefit from our non-invasive, surgery sparing technology, improving their treatment pathway and outcomes, reducing costs within the medical arena, and saving on societal costs in terms of downtime and loss of working days.
Key Points Researchers at Imperial College London are studying low-grade brain tumour treatments as a way to prevent them from progressing to high grade. A Foundation Global Intern is helping investigate a range of drugs in combination with low-intensity focused ultrasound in a preclinical model. Dr. Sophie Morse Brain tumours have a devastating impact on those they affect and it is understandable that the bulk of research efforts have historically been concentrated on higher grade, more advanced tumours, where patient outcomes are incredibly poor. Indeed, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation has funded a number of global clinical trials involving high-grade brain tumours, and the UK Foundation will be funding an early clinical trial using sonodynamic therapy to treat glioblastoma (an aggressive, high-grade brain tumour) in the near future. Important though this work is, it does mean that lower grade brain tumours can be overlooked when it comes to research; consequently, there are even fewer clinical trials available for these patients. Low grade gliomas (LGGs), classified as grade 2, are cancerous brain tumours that grow slowly at first but invariably progress to become high-grade, fast growing tumours over time. The reasons for this are not understood, making it impossible to predict a timescale or give an indication of risk for individual patients. This poses a considerable challenge to those living with LGGs, which patients often describe as feeling like “living with a ticking time bomb”. LGGs usually affect young people in the prime of their life, often at the start of their careers or with very young families of their own, and there is no cure. Research into all brain tumours remains critically underfunded and this is even more pronounced for LGGs. Like higher grade tumours, LGGs are particularly challenging to treat as it is difficult to get medicines to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a protective layer of tightly packed cells that make up the brain. Limited understanding of which treatments are effective for different low-grade brain tumour subtypes also represents a major barrier to improving patient outcomes. Sophie Morse, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, hopes to open the door to new treatment options with research supported by the Astro Brain Tumour Fund. Dr. Morse and her research group, which includes a student in the Focused Ultrasound Foundation’s Global Internship Program, is investigating a range of drugs in combination with low-intensity focused ultrasound in different subtypes of LGG in a preclinical model. The focused ultrasound is being used to temporarily open the BBB, giving the medicines better access to the tumour. Should these early investigations prove successful, there is the potential to leverage the lessons learnt from clinical research in high-grade tumours to rapidly develop similar trials for LGG patients. An exciting prospect, as Dr. Morse outlines: “At the moment, we are at the early stages, concentrating on two specific subtypes, but our ambition – if we have the funding – is to test five different drugs and four different subtypes of LGG – giving us a strong sense of what might work best in different patients. Combining these findings with the work that is already being done using focused ultrasound to treat patients with higher-grade tumours, we hope to discover new treatment options for the successful management of LGGs. This could ultimately reduce worry for patients with LGG in the short term and the overall prevalence of high-grade tumours in the longer term.” Mary Burton and Dawn Emerton, trustees of the Astro Brain Tumour Fund, share why the research is urgently needed: “This research is vital because LGG brain tumour patients have very few effective treatment options. Radiotherapy to the brain can cause long-term cognitive effects, and chemotherapy is particularly gruelling. The current treatments do not offer a cure. Alternative treatment options are urgently needed to help these predominantly young people live their lives as fully as possible.” Find out more about low grade glioma here. Find out more about Dr. Sophie Morse, and the work of her team in using focused ultrasound to tackle brain tumours and neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia, here.
A new state-of-the-art high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) machine, the JC200 manufactured by Haifu Technology Ltd, has been installed at the Churchill Hospital, giving Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) patients access to the latest in this innovative technology. The JC200 device (Haifu Technology Ltd.) newly installed at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, with patient on device, photographed with patient consent. An earlier version of this device has been used for clinical indications such as uterine fibroids and adenomyosis, as well as for previous research trials of cancers involving the kidney, liver and pancreas. This new machine allows the OUH team to continue to expand the clinical programme in treatment of non-cancerous tumours including uterine fibroids in addition to developing research programmes potentially involving cancers of the liver, pancreas, breast and the musculoskeletal system including sarcoma. The new JC200, CE-marked for tumour therapy, was gifted to OUH by the Chinese manufacture, Haifu Technology Ltd., and replaces a similar but older HIFU machine of the same name, which had been installed in 2010 and was used to gain CE-marking for the device but was reaching end of life. Charitable donations including funds from the Focused Ultrasound Foundation have helped cover the installation and maintenance costs of the new device. Dr Rustam Rea (OUH Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Director of Clinical Improvement) officially opened the new unit on 30th January 2026 with the clinical HIFU team. Prof David Cranston, Emeritus Clinical Director of HIFU, said: “This technology holds enormous promise for greater clinical expansion, as well as further research. Studies in fibroid patients have shown that outcomes with HIFU are similar to surgery with faster recovery and fewer adverse effects.” Dr Paul Lyon, OUH Consultant Radiologist and Clinical Director of the Oxford HIFU service, said: “This upgrade is fantastic news for our patients. The improved technology in the latest JC200 device means treatments can be quicker and smoother for the patients. It’s a major upgrade in terms of both diagnostic and therapeutic performance. In addition to enabling expansion of the existing clinical service it also offers great potential for cutting-edge oncology clinical research.”
When Martina and Claudio found out their twins were in jeopardy, they turned to focused ultrasound, which was performed in utero to treat twin-twin transfusion syndrome.
