About

Trained at Imperial College and across UK teaching hospitals, completing specialist plastic surgery training in Oxford with a focus on skin cancer and service development. Spent two years at Boston Consulting Group working on healthcare and life sciences strategy, which shaped a lasting interest in the gap between technical promise and real-world adoption. Returned to full-time NHS practice, and the roles since have accumulated around one problem: Chief Medical Officer at Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley, following a period as Associate Medical Director for Research and Innovation at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, where the trust earned NHS InSites designation and recognition among the NHS's most innovation-active organisations; Founding Director of the Royal College of Surgeons of England Innovation Hub; Editor-in-Chief of the RCS Bulletin; co-lead of the Innovation module on Oxford University's Surgical Sciences MSc; and, from October 2026, Visiting Professor at Buckinghamshire New University.

Alongside the system roles, co-developed a single-use medical device now used in more than 75 million procedures worldwide and adopted across the NHS. That experience, from prototype to global scale, is the commercial grounding behind the writing and the advisory work.

How I choose external work

External work is selective, upstream, and deliberately limited. Advisory engagements involve clinical adoption strategy, evidence design, and product-clinical fit, and nothing else. Not offered, at any fee: NHS market access work, procurement introductions, selling into organisations where I hold roles, or advocacy for any product inside the NHS. Where a potential conflict exists with a held role, the engagement is declined or the interest declared. This page is the standing version of that declaration.

For press and producers

Ryan Kerstein is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon and clinical innovation leader. He is Chief Medical Officer at Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley, having previously been Associate Medical Director for Research and Innovation at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. He is Founding Director of the Royal College of Surgeons of England Innovation Hub, Editor-in-Chief of the RCS Bulletin, and co-lead of the Innovation module on Oxford University's Surgical Sciences MSc. From October 2026, he is Visiting Professor at Buckinghamshire New University. He co-developed a single-use medical device now used in more than 75 million procedures worldwide and adopted across the NHS.

Photograph: Download high-resolution photograph

Contact: ryan@thesurgeon.io. Response is usually same day.