NHS Innovation Podcasts

Showcasing the best of UK innovation in healthcare

Episode 2: Diagnostics and treatment for heart disease

This episode discusses some of the most exciting innovations in diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in the UK, how they are discovered and then implemented in the NHS.  It covers examples of new methods and products currently being tested, how this is done, how the impact of a new product can be measured, how innovations are adopted into the NHS, and what can be learnt from failures. It also discusses integration and scale, discussing examples of products and services initially rolled out at one hospital that are now part of national best-practice.

Chris Born

NHS Innovation Specialist, Healthcare UK, Department for Business and Trade

Chris, a former NHS CEO has worked as a senior consultant healthcare specialist with Healthcare UK based at the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) for the last twelve years. He is an experienced executive coach and mentor and has a passion for improving health and care worldwide.

Chris has worked with hundreds of NHS and commercial health and care organisations in the UK to take their export offer to operators, developers, investors, governments and health services in the target markets of India, China, SE Asia, the Middle East and other countries.  He has been responsible for the development of a detailed set of international UK offers, including digital health, NHS Innovation, clinical services (most recently diabetes, oncology, cardiac services and mental health), training and education and healthcare infrastructure.

Chris worked for 25 years as a senior leader in the NHS both in a NHS Trust and as a NHS commissioner. Chris also worked in a predecessor of NHS England (the NHS Executive) and in 2012 was seconded to the then Department of Health to develop NHS Global (which led to the creation of Healthcare UK).

Professor Rakesh Uppal

Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at NHS Barts Heart Centre.
Director, Barts Life Sciences and Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University London (QMUL).
Chairman of Raphael Labs. 

Professor Uppal conducts a busy tertiary adult practice in valvular heart disease, complex aortovascular surgery and adult cardiac surgery. As the surgical research lead at the Heart Centre my interests include stem cell applications for the myocardium and understanding the genomic basis of cellular ageing in acute renal injury following cardiac interventions. Research interests include assessing outcomes of cardiac interventions, decision making in aortovascular Surgery and risk averse behaviour in cardiac surgeons.

As Director of Barts Life Sciences (www.bartslifesciences.org), he is helping to develop an exciting life sciences cluster in the centre of London, located next to The Royal London Hospital, QMUL School of Medicine, Europe’s financial capital and adjacent to the largest AI community in Europe. We are using ML and NLP techniques in conjunction with AI on our huge data assets to predict, prevent and develop precision medicine to treat our patients; using genomics and omics data to establish precision medicine in a diverse population at scale; introducing digital technology and digital therapeutics to translate care pathways at scale in the largest NHS trust in the country.

Dr. Claudia Montanaro

Cardiologist Consultant (Adult Congenital Heart Disease and Cardiac MRI), Royal Brompton Hospital, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London.
Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer, National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London. 
Founder and lead of the Adult Fontan Service at the Royal Brompton Hospital. 

Dr Montanaro received her cardiology training at San Rafael University Hospital in Milan, where she was awarded honours. Subsequently she moved to the UK and received ACHD, congenital echo, maternal cardiology and cardiac MRI training in London.

Dr Montanaro is an associate editor for the International Journal of Cardiology and International Journal of Cardiology Congenital Heart Disease. She is also a reviewer for most major journals in the cardiovascular field. To date, she has authored several peer-reviewed publications, including papers in The Lancet, Circulation, and European Heart Journal. In addition to her publications, Dr Montanaro has written chapters for several highly regarded cardiology textbooks, including Adult Congenital Heart Disease: Diagnosis and Management, which is now in its fourth edition and is the world’s best-selling textbook in this growing cardiovascular sector.

Dr Montanaro is member of the European Cardiac Society, Italian Cardiac Society and MRI society; she is a faculty member and speaker to several national and international conferences. 

Deborah Morris-Rosendahl

Scientific Director of the NHS England South East Genomic Laboratory Hub in London, Scientific Lead of the Genomics Innovation Unit at Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and heads the Clinical Genetics and Genomics Laboratory in the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Clinical Group as a Consultant Clinical Scientist. 

Dr Morris-Rosendahl‘s laboratory is commissioned in NHS England to deliver specialist genomic testing for inherited cardiac and respiratory conditions and current research in the laboratory focuses on developing new and innovative approaches to delivering cutting edge genomic diagnostics and increasing diagnostic yield.

Dr Morris-Rosendahl holds her academic affiliation in the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

Ross Upton

CEO and founder of Ultromics, an AI company building diagnostic algorithms to enable earlier and better detection of Heart Failure in Echocardiography. 

During his time at Ultromics, his team has achieved 4 FDA clearances, 2 FDA Breakthrough designations, 2 reimbursement codes, 2 CE marks and has raised >$60m in funding.

Dr Upton has a broad scientific background having undertaken four degrees in clinical sciences, including two master's degrees, one in Clinical Biochemistry and another in Cardiovascular Imaging. He trained as a physiologist within the NHS, before completing a PhD in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford.

Dr Upton currently serves on the steering committee of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) Heart Failure program in the USA: HeartShare; a $37m program dedicated to identifying phenotypes of HFpEF enabling more effective treatment. He also serves as the co-chair of the AI steering committee.