Celebrating our Healthcare Scientists
This week is Healthcare Science Week (13-19 March) and a chance to shine a light on how vital healthcare scientists are to patient care in the NHS.
These team members work hard behind the scenes, providing essential support to clinicians to make sure our patients get the right diagnosis and deliver safe and effective treatment. In fact, their work underpins 80 per cent of all diagnoses in the NHS.
Healthcare scientists throughout the NHS work in more than 50 specialisms which can be categorised into four groupings: Physiological Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering, Bioinformatics.
At Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust, there are 227 healthcare scientists (at last count!) working in 13 specialisms across five of our divisions. Without these highly skilled scientists, many of hospital departments simply could not function.
Among Royal Surrey’s Healthcare Scientists are Ushani, Daniel and Helen who have taken the time to talk about their role in supporting our patients.
Ushani Sahabandu 
Trainee Biomedical Scientist Ushani is one of around 60 biomedical scientists working in the Diagnostics and Clinical Support Division. She specialises in blood sciences and carries out a range of essential laboratory and scientific tests to support our patients’ diagnosis and treatment. Currently, she’s working in the blood transfusion specialism, screening patients’ blood samples to make sure that the right blood gets to the right patient if they need a transfusion as part of their cancer care, during an operation or when they are giving birth. Read more.
Daniel Sutcliffe
Clinical scientist Daniel is one of around 25 healthcare scientists in the Royal Surrey Radiotherapy Physics Team. He works closely with oncologists to make sure cancer patients get safe, accurate and effective radiotherapy treatment. On why he chose a career as a clinical scientist, Daniel said: “I wanted to do something that would have an impact on people's lives, and that's what I like best about my job. I don't always see it, but everything I do contributes to helping our patients.” Read more.
Helen Le Sueur
Helen has worked as a computer scientist at Royal Surrey since September 2023, designing and building bespoke computer programs that free up NHS staff time so they can spend more time caring for patients. She’s part of a team of around 25 computer scientists who, between them, can be working on around 100 projects at any given time. Read more.