Billy Boyle

What makes Billy Boyle a Global Shaker?

Billy Boyle is an engineering graduate from Cambridge University. He is one of the original co-founders of Owlstone Inc, spun out of Cambridge in 2004, which has raised more than $28M in investment and won over $25M in industrial screening and defence contracts. He initially worked with silicon foundries in the design and fabrication of FAIMs core microchip technology and is co-inventor on 19 patents.

He then assumed a commercial role within P&L in the Scientific Instruments and Industrial business units; responsible for sales of FAIMS products and contracts with >150 global clients, including Agilent, Thermo, Roche Diagnostics, Samsung, GSK, 4D Pharma, Mayo Clinic and the NHS.

Billy started to focus on the medical applications of FAIMS technology after his wife, Kate, was diagnosed and later died of colon cancer as a result of a late diagnosis. He worked closely with clinical partners who integrated FAIMS technology across a broad spectrum of clinical trials in cancer, inflammatory disease & infectious disease.

After positive clinical trial results, he headed up the newly formed Medical business unit, which won a £1M ($1.3m) NHS contract for LuCID to use FAIMS technology in the early detection of lung cancer. With ongoing clinical and commercial success, Billy led the process to spin out Owlstone Medical Ltd and became the founding CEO of the organisation, which completed a $50m financing round in October 2018. The mission of Owlstone Medical is to save 100,000 lives and $1.5B in healthcare costs through precision medicine & early detection.

Owlstone Medical also focuses on the development and application of Breath Biopsy®. Every time you breathe out there are hundreds of chemicals on your breath produced as the end product of metabolic processes within the body or as a result of chemicals from external sources, some are which are tell-tale markers of disease. Breath Biopsy operates by collecting these detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on the ReCIVA® device, and then analysing the samples in the world’s commercial-scale breath lab in Cambridge, UK.

Billy is also a judge for the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Pioneer award and a trustee of the Linacre Institute, helping talented and disadvantaged students reach highly competitive universities.

Last updated: February 19, 2020

Next Profile