Shah Islam: Leading UKIO and Putting People First in the Age of AI

In this episode of Imaging Journeys, Aidan Pearce of Ellew MedTech Talent sits down with Shah Islam, interventional neuroradiologist and President of UKIO, the UK's largest radiology and oncology conference.

Shah's career reads like a masterclass in building something meaningful. From his early days at Barts and the London School of Medicine, through his training on the south west London rotation, to becoming a consultant interventional neuroradiologist at one of the world's most respected neuroscience centres, his path has been shaped not just by ambition, but by the people he's met along the way.

In this conversation, Shah is refreshingly honest about what that journey has actually looked like. He talks about the moment he fell in love with neuroradiology, sparked by a chance encounter with a senior consultant whose email signature alone was enough to change the course of his career. He reflects on what it really means to succeed in medicine, and why the career ladder, for all its usefulness, can be a dangerous thing if you let it run the show. 

One of the most compelling parts of this episode is Shah's account of his fellowship year in Toronto, a year that by his own admission brought him to his lowest point mentally, but ultimately transformed him. His mentor Pascal introduced him to the concept of Bushido, seven ancient samurai principles built around integrity, honesty, and courage, and applied them to everything from complex endovascular cases to how you show up for the people around you. It's a conversation about psychological safety, emotional regulation under pressure, and what it actually takes to build a team that performs when it matters most. Shah is candid about his mental health in a way that people at his level rarely are, and it makes for one of the most genuinely human conversations we've had on this podcast.

Shah also brings serious depth to the AI debate. Having spent years researching AI algorithms for high grade brain tumours at Imperial College London, he has a uniquely grounded perspective on where the technology actually is versus where people assume it to be. He's clear that the next real leap forward is coming, but equally clear that we're further away than the hype suggests, and that the biggest work still to be done is in educating both the public and the wider healthcare workforce on what AI's role in their care actually looks like day to day.

And then there's UKIO 2026. As president, Shah embraces "Putting Humanity at the Centre of Healthcare in the Age of the Machine" as this year's theme. He wants to hear the stories of the frontline workers and teams doing remarkable things quietly, without the platform or the voice to tell them. His vision for the conference is less about keynotes and more about genuine connection, fireside chats, a new awards programme, and the kind of conversations that spark something real in the people listening.

Throughout all of it, one thing comes through consistently: Shah is someone who has done the inner work. He talks openly about mental health, about the pressure to conform to what a successful radiologist is supposed to look like, and about the long process of learning, slowly, through experience, to separate his own happiness from what the world tells him he should be chasing. He talks about operating in black and white, never grey zones, and why holding hard to your principles is both the most difficult and the most freeing thing you can do in a career like this one.

Whether you're clinical, commercial, or sitting somewhere in the middle of the imaging world, this is a conversation that will stay with you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Imaging Journeys. I'm Aidan Pierce from Eliumed Tech Talent, and this is the podcast where we sit down with the people shaping medical imaging. Not just what they've achieved, but how they think, what's driven them, and honestly, what's challenged them along the way. This episode, I'm joined by Shah Islam, interventional neuroradiologist and president of UKIO, the UK's biggest radiology and oncology conference. We get into the real gap between what AI can actually do in radiology versus what people think it can do. We talk about UKIO 2026 and this year's theme of putting humanity at the centre of healthcare in the age of the machine. And there's some really candid stuff about his year in Toronto and how his mentor Pascal supported him to come out the other side. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, good question. So as we were saying just before, when you apply for med school at the age of 17, I don't think anyone knows who they are or who they want to be. So you kind of go with what you think's safe. And you know, coming from family, physicians, my grandparents, my older brother felt like a very safe choice. But the reality is, you know, you apply at 17, you come out of 24, and you're still so like precocious in your development. So medicine was always a safe choice. I liked sciences. I knew I had an older brother who could kind of usher me through whatever challenges at that point in life. And yeah, it just felt a very safe bet. Um, who, you know, it's it's an incredibly rewarding thing, like knowing that you know you're gonna help people in their hardest moments. Yeah. So that's kind of like why I wanted to be a doctor. You know, radiology. Well, first it was about deciding about radiology. I decided pretty early, and I was just kind of mesmerized by um a talk in med school by someone who actually then ended up becoming one of my best mates. You know, I was always interested in you know that intersection between science and medicine. Radiology was always something which was always under cusp of innovation, whether it'd be new machines on the diagnostic side, the intervention side was just like massively uh scaling forward. So like radiology was like once I developed once I developed an interest in it, I just that's all I wanted to do clinically. But that point I didn't know whether I want to do diagnostics or intervention. Um, and then that was a journey in itself, like finding neuroradiology. So they just kind of evolved and you've just kind of found yourself almost accidentally making a path. Yeah, like whatever I've done in life, it's always been the axis that's been pulling me towards it, yeah, has always been the people.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I remember like uh, you know, you you start radiology and there's all these different specialties they send you on these rotations. So I trained at St George's on the South West London rotation, and they said, Yeah, you're you're starting on neuro. I went there and I met um one of the neuroradiologists. I remember seeing the email signature on the bottom off river's report. Right guy's name's Declan Johnson, and he signed it off DJ. Um, and he introduced himself as a neurovascular and spinal interventionist. And I was like, What is that? But it sounds so cool. Yeah, and I wanted to do that. Yeah. Um, so like it's a little bit immature, and you kind of get drawn to people. And the thing which Declan did, which uh was amazing, was that he just I was a first-year radiologist, he was a very senior consultant, and he wanted to know about my story. So, and he always used to say it's like you know, you speak to the trainees and a fellow, they keep you young, they keep you relevant with what's going on in the world. I just I really like that. From that day on, it was just like, you know, I want to be this neurointerventionalist, I don't know how I'm gonna get there, and I've still got like five years ahead of me. Yeah. It's people, yeah, yeah, they draw you towards things like a moss to a flame. Yeah, that was very radiology for me.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

You studied medicine at Bart's and the London School of Medicine. What was that experience like for you? And was there a particular moment during your medical training where you realised you wouldn't need to specialise in radiology?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yeah, it's Barth's uh super cool place around the corner from here. Like in a tough, tough place in London, right? Um, East London's generally been like a huge immigrant population, um, underfunded services, but still the hospitals were just top class, world class. Um, I saw a lot of people in local communities struggling. Uh, it kind of reinforces why you want to do what you're doing. Um, there's a wealth of good you can do. Um, it was my first exposure to world-class research. Um, and then it just developed that hunger in me to just want to keep doing better and better. Yeah. So I think when I was at med school, I was kind of like subconscious, and probably not even subconsciously, just consciously, like I wanted to, you know, win prizes, I wanted to publish hard. I was just I was chasing these things that I thought would bring me happiness. And you know, whether or not whether it brought me happiness or not, what it did do was always allow me to be in the best position to apply for the next gig. Um, so I still think like, you know, what I did in those early years still always set me up for being in the best position to apply for the next job, which then allowed me to the platform to apply for the next one. So, you know, now you know I'm a consultant interventional neuroradiologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, which is generally considered, you know, Queen Square in the world of neuroscience, it's like it's the home of the tendon hammer, right? It is the home of neurosurgery. And you know, any wherever you go in the world, there's a consciousness of that. But I still think that my j my endpoint in terms of my consulting career, whether it is my endpoint or not, remains to be seen. But it all stemmed from being a first-year medical student and just wanting to, you know, I reverse engineered it. Um, if I go back, like you can only do what's in front of you and do it well.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

It's it's really interesting that you've um that you've made that decision in into medicine in the first place, and you mentioned your family of decisions as well, and and having that kind of direction a little bit from there. And I've always I've always thought um that if I could go back, I think I'd go more into medicine and perhaps try and take a similar route. You know, knowing what I know now, that's what I'd I wish I did looking back, but um because you get to help people and you get to do so much good, yeah, I think it's a nice place to be.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

It's crazy rewarding, and yeah, I do a lot of things, right? You know, like and we're gonna talk about it. I work in different industries, different sectors, but there's very few things that give you that endorphin release of helping someone. And you know, people still talk about identities and what drives you and whatnot. I'm still like, you know, there's this perception of shah doing all these different things, but I guess one of the most meaningful things to me is still, you know, being a physician. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

I think I the probably nearest that I get is as a recruiter, um, is when I put someone in a placement that's been struggling or they're out of work. The buzz from that is is immense because you're helping somebody and and I love that.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, I mean, like there's this misconception that medicine is one of the you know, it's it's unique in a sense that you know you're helping people, but you know, the guy that takes our trash out. Like I see him helping our elderly parents and doing a job there, and I think you can find happiness in everything that you do, regardless of what industry you work in. You know, this is a people, everything that we do is a people game, and you know, you being a recruiter is no less meaningful than me helping a patient, it's just that's what I do. But you're helping people in a difficult financial climate, you're helping people that are down and out in their life but have just been laid off and don't know when that next gig's gonna come, and yeah, like you're doing the same thing as me, and I'm pretty sure people are massively grateful for you and what you do for them. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

This is one of my favourite questions to ask, and I'm kind of shoehorning it in a bit. But which mentor or role model, and you've touched on some someone already, I think, but which mentor or role model gave you advice that still guides your decisions? What was that advice and what can you tell me about that person?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Yeah, so this is probably touching on my time in Toronto because um, like once I'd finished my training in the UK, um, I wanted to go to Toronto because historically it's one of the most important centres for what I do, interventional neuroidiology in North America, and it really set up the foundations for interventional neuroidiology in just the whole of North America from the founding fathers of what we do, um, and they set up a satellite unit. So for me, it's super important to get to Toronto, um, and that's where I met my mentor, Pascal Mossman, and the whole year was transformative in you know, we worked on skill sets, technical abilities of how to get the best outcomes in terms of the cases, but there was a whole psychological aspect of um the fellowship, which we can talk about later. But one of he taught me so much, but one of the things that he taught me was that we don't operate in grey zones of morality, things are black and white. If you operate in grey zones, then that's a slippery slope. So you have your set of morals and your set of principles, and you do not waiver them for any particular person or any situation. So, and just think of things in terms of being black and white. And I've taken that forward with me. Um, and I think if you have a hard set of principles, then I think whatever happens in life, whether you're dealing with a case, you're dealing with an organization, you're dealing with conflict, as long as you're on the right side of it, then regardless of the outcome, you're gonna go to sleep at night well. The worst thing that can happen is you wrestling with your own conscience about whether you did the right thing. So don't operate in grey zones.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

I think that's really powerful actually. And I'm as you're talking about that, I'm thinking about my chit my kids, yeah, and about parenting my kids with that kind of message in mind.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

I think that what you've said is really powerful. You've worked on developing AI algorithms for glioblastoma and other advanced imaging biomarkers. What was the moment that you realised the future of radiology isn't just being a better clinician, but understanding technology and innovation?

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Yeah, good question. So I started my research in 2017, which was kind of when um that whole AI and radiology boom was taking place. So, right place, right time, uh, Imperial College, London, uh, surrounded by physicians, radiologists, and you know, the best uh engineers and you know compute technology anywhere in the world. I always knew the power and the potential of computer vision, but you know, there was all these crazy quotes from Jeff Hinton about you know what radiology looks like and what diagnostic radiology will look like um going forward. I knew the solution was much more complex than you know just computer vision and uh image and object identification and classification. So at the right place, right time. I knew, you know, traditionally, even in the space that I was a radiology trainee, that imaging volumes were just going up and up, because you could feel it in the workflow from when I was a first-year radiologist to a fourth and fifth year radiologist. So I knew imaging volume was going up, but retention of radiologists was going down, and recruitment was not as fast as um it needed to be. So it was always gonna reach a inflection point of which you know demand would um outstrip supply of radiologists. So I know people are not scalable, but technology is yeah, there was a real potential there to explore how AI could improve clinical workflows. I always knew it was going to be slower um than what it was deemed to be. But I was always more interested in not the soft triage of normal or abnormal, um, and it just feels like we're still talking about chest x-rays like 10 years on. Um, but I was always more interested in the multi-point data omics side of things. So the problem with the way a lot of people look at AI is they're trying to train algorithms uh to think like radiologists, but really you should train algorithms to think like computers. So looking at, you know, try and train algorithms on raw data that we can't interpret as radiologists, but you know, computer algorithms are very good to do that stuff. So I was always in this brain tumor space um where we needed to move beyond what the human eye could see. So taking multiple data points across the patient pathway, multiple imaging data points, um, using raw data and the structural data, and then trying to build algorithms um based on that. Um I still think there's a lot of potential. Um, I still think going forward, it is the future. We're just really far away from where, you know, where when that piece of work or those particular pieces of work come to clinical translation. What do you think is needed to sort of speed that up? You know, it's an organic process, right? What helped speed up the whole AI scene was the change in compute and the introduction of GPUs. There's going to be another technological advance which will allow us to build better algorithms and you know, and the source data which we use will become much more advanced in terms of its structure, digitization, labelling. So, you know, the next leap quantum uh foundation models proving to be very successful, but there will be another jump. I think where we are right now within uh AI and radiology and what's now commercially available and you know in the clinic is as far as it's gonna get with the current iterations of algorithms, but there will be another jump forward where I say it's like um you know when hand solo hits hyperspace and you're just flying through. Yeah, there we'll have that moment again, yeah, and the algorithms will be so much better.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Um, I'm a strong believer in technology and and the people driving it. Um, but it remains to be seen when that will happen. I think what we see now is there is a public um acceptance that we're using AI day-to-day. Um, the regulators are much more on board, and you have a workforce who are much more technologically savvy. So when that jump does happen, it's going to be much smoother because it's been a little bit painful getting stuff into clinics at the moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Your research has been quite prolific, uh, leading the diffusion of glioma? Glyoma, um, FPIA pet MRI trials, uh, steering the Tesla gel brain matrix study. Yeah. Um multiple high-impact publications. What drives that level of ambition? What does success look like to you in research?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah, I guess on paper it looks like I've done all these things, but ultimately I was just fortunate to be part of a team that was led by really, really good um scientists, like physician scientists, and these guys were my PhD supervisors. So like it it would be disingenuous for me to take credit for all of these things. They selected me to do a job, and you know, I did it to the best of my abilities, but you know, they saw something in me. Um, they recruited me um to do that job. Always, you know, it comes back to you know your previous track record and what you've done uh previously. So I was just really fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, but I really did love driving, you know, the clinical studies, setting something up from inception, um, from you know, being mentored by really great uh scientists, and then you know, setting up these research trials, which essentially become your baby, um, recruiting patients into them, um, and then getting the results, doing the analysis has been, yeah, it's just been an amazing experience. What I would say is out of all of those things, you know, yeah, it's nice on paper to have publications and whatnot, but if they're meaningful publications and it helps spark someone else's idea in the field and they can take what I've done forward, that's a massive win. Yeah. We're so driven by publications and getting grants because that's how you know you're remunerated in science to get the next big grant. But on a personal level, if someone if you know if it sparks someone's interest in science or they think actually this group have done this, how can we take it forward? That equally those are the wins that no one talks about. What I would say is that you know, I've worked in high-grade brain tumours for my research. Um, and you're working on the diagnostic side of things and trying to develop new imaging biomarkers. You need people to come in and do these clinical studies, like the generosity of the research participants in their worst moments when they've been given a bad prognosis, and you're asking them to come in for a couple hours in the course of their treatment to do a research study, it's extremely humbling. Um, and it says a lot about you know humanity. And I'm so grateful to everyone who took part in the research studies. The best thing I can do to thank them is to try and analyse this data and make something meaningful out of it. Um that's yeah, people are so generous in those moments. Um and the crazy I you know, I still remember everyone that recruited into the studies. Um, you never forget them, you never forget the faces, you never forget um those small human interactions. Um yeah, it's you know, I'm just blown away by human generosity.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

That's quite a powerful motivator as well to make sure you do a good job, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

As you've climbed the career ladder, have you felt pressure to conform to a particular version of what a successful radiologist should be?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah, I think we all we all struggle with preconceived conceptions of what success looks like. So, you know, on paper, on paper, you know, becoming a radiologist in a quaternary centre who's got a strong uh research track record, um, in a leadership role, and taking multiple management roles, on paper, these are things that one would deem successful. I think what we struggle with is actually um identifying, you know, where does happiness sit within that formula? And often what you find is that you've got people who are on paper very successful but they're miserable. Um and to you know, on reflection, that having been through doing everything that I've done, there are very few things that actually make one happy in the workplace. What we should actually do is strive to be happy and the best versions of ourselves rather than what society or what a medical community deems you to be a success. You can always be um, you know, chasing chasing more um within the career ladder, but if you're not happy doing it, are you successful? Probably not. I think sometimes it can take a while to have that realisation as well that you need to just be stop chasing things sometimes and be happy with the ladder provides you structure and an idea of what um you should be doing at every day. You know, it can be quite helpful, that's why these structures are in place, but you know, within any organisation. If you can somehow remove that structure and focus on people's happiness, then that organization is going to flourish more. And then we we don't really talk about it enough. Like, you know, it's the first thing I say to my nurses, you know, are you happy? What can I do to make things better? Um, so yeah, the ladder is a it's a dangerous thing. On a personal level, it's like you know, and I keep coming back to it, we climb it because we think it's the right thing to do, and we think other people are judging us based on our position in that ladder, when really we should just be focusing on what parts of the day make you happy, just keep doing those things. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

You've been researching AI uh in radiology for for years. What's the gap between what AI can actually do and what people think it can do?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah, so I'm gonna be a little bit biased because generally you know, my tribe and everything that I do, you know, because I'm so deeply embedded within it. So my frame of reference is people who are have been studying AI, data engineers, researchers, clinicians that are involved in the translation of AI, and then CEOs of tech companies that are developing AI algorithms. So, you know, everyone's got this, you know, because we're in it, we believe that it is the panacea and it's the solution to you know a lot of our healthcare needs. But there's a disconnect between, you know, those guys and the reality. You know, I think we've got to do a lot of work on the public patient um initiatives, trying to get the public a better understanding of where AI sits within their healthcare. There's still a you know an education piece to do within the workforce of healthcare workers. Um to disconnect the you know, when I started in this, there was a huge knowledge gap between those in industry and those who weren't in industry. I think that knowledge gap's reducing because information's becoming just much more available. But I think you know we need to, you know, be more forthcoming with how we educate the public on where particular parts of AI have been involved in their care, but equally, you know, there's a fail-safe mechanism here and it's still a physician-led service.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, we're not getting rid of um physicians anytime soon, are we? No.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

AI is just a tool. It's a tool to augment our practice. Um, and you know, it has it can it has huge um potential um across many of the processes and the stuff that we do in the background. Um, but I still think healthcare should be a physician-led service and a physician-facing service.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Gonna move on to talking about um UKIO uh 2026. Your theme is putting humanity at the centre of healthcare in the age of the machine. What specifically prompted you to choose this theme?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Yeah, because uh I've been going on, you know, I'm on the conference circuit, I've been doing it for years and years. I think as the president of UK, I've got some, you know, I've got some jurisdiction over the theme and you know, what parts of healthcare I want to promote. And, you know, we've been pushing AI so hard for so many years across different conferences. When I speak to patients, the most important part of that interaction is how they're made to feel from you know the interaction between healthcare workers and that patient interface, right? That's what the patient's gonna remember, not what score their AI algorithm gave them in terms of risk stratification and whatnot. People that need uh access to healthcare are coming in the worst moments of life, and what they remember is how healthcare workers made them feel. There's no denying that you know the healthcare systems are underfunded, so much of what we do is out of goodwill and the responsibility that we burden to just help people in the worst moments. So, why we do UKIO is basically put the focus back on to people delivering healthcare. I want to hear their stories, I want to hear what the teams are doing within their departments to make patients' lives better. And effectively, I want to celebrate the people and the teams behind all these great initiatives. Um, and of course, technology, we are in the digital age. We are using AI, we are using digitization, we are using scribes, but uh healthcare workers, frontline workers are at the heart of delivering that and I want to hear their stories.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

So, how do we how will that be done at UKIO 2026? How will we how do you how are you gonna put that? How are you gonna get people to put humanity and get those stories out? What's is there uh initiatives there in place that are gonna do that?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Yeah, so traditionally we should have these um plenary sessions, plenary speakers um at the start of the day. Uh one of one thing I've done is we're gonna have the UKI awards where we're gonna accept nominations for people and teams across different categories. And what I want to do is basically celebrate those teams and then do a number of fireside chats where I get to talk to them just like we are now about you know where they started and how they got to that endpoint of delivering such great um care pathways. There's so many interesting people in what we do, but one they don't have the platform or the voice to be able to tell their story. What I'm gonna do is get those guys and girls to connect with members in the audience and spark something within them to say, actually, you know what, I've got that idea, I'm gonna take it forward. And hopefully, in all of these human stories, um, it will resonate with something within someone. So I've always, you know, I've always wanted to build a platform where I can give a voice to those who don't have a voice to help the disenfranchise, um, the people, the people who think like they just, you know, they've given so much of their life to the healthcare system, and you know, to what end we can share some of the success stories or even connect on some of the struggles, then I think it can be quite powerful for the audience. The idea is to just inspire and keep things moving and you know, make people at heart of everything that we do.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

Yeah. I think one of the things I found since I've started this podcast actually ties into what you're saying is that people are coming up to me now and saying, I love the podcast. Um it's putting um it humanises, it's humanizing the industry and the people in the industry. Yeah. And uh that you know, the comments like um you know, it's exactly what we need. We need we need these stories coming out, so it really ties in nicely with what you're doing at UKIO next year. As UKIO president, what surprised you most about how things work behind the scenes and what's been the biggest challenge so far?

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah, it's like uh you know, I've been with I've been involved in UKO for a number of years, you know, as the VP for industry, taking care of the sponsors and doing the educational piece around what industry brings to UKIO, but just the sheer hard work of the the production team, like these guys work tirelessly behind the scenes to deliver the event year on year. Um, the VPs that we work with, again, they're doing it all out of goodwill. Um, and so for me, it's just again learning about their stories, why they're doing UKO, what they want to do going forward. As a president gives me an opportunity to mentor them, coach them. Um some of them, you know, want to do different things with UK. It's my ability, um, my position that allows me to help them in those moments. Um, it's just been incredible, like just a peek behind the curtains, um, just steering this juggernaut off a ship. Yeah, he's got a huge budget, he's got a huge team. It is the biggest uh radiology and oncology event of the year. Um, but yeah, it's it's a complete honour to work with these guys.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

I think people realise how big the team is behind UKIO.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Yeah, but equally they don't realise the scale of it and how small the team is. I've always preferred to work with small agile teams, so I just want to work with people who are fully committed, um, that got good hearts and want to do it for the right reason. Um, and then a small agile team's much more powerful than just having bodies. Um, it's my job to motivate them, it's my job to um help them when they're feeling deflated, to give them a voice when they don't have a voice. Um but yeah, it's a surprisingly small team for a scale off the event. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

What was the process um of being selected as president of UKIO?

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Yeah, uh I never once did I think I'd be president. Um so I'd been doing this thing as a VP for a few years. I got to know the team behind the scenes. Um, you have to have good relationships with industry to be able to grow. And I've always said that UKIO grows with industry because one, you know, there's the sponsorship business side of things, but what really drives me and my relationship with industry is the huge amount of RD that they put into healthcare to allow us to improve patient lives. We go hand in hand, right? Um, radiology would not be able to move forward without the hundreds of millions that industry have put into RD. And there's an incredible story to be told there from the RD to the partnerships that they have with NHS Trust um and other healthcare institutions, and then how that translates to scalable technologies across the NHS. So, you know, we're like brothers and sisters in this game. We don't um, you know, everybody has equal importance to UKO. And one of the things I did when I was VP for industry is that I didn't like that there was this educational flaw and then there's trade flaw um underneath. I think you know, I went some lengths to hybridise the the whole uh process and the experience so that industry had presence throughout those educational uh talks. Um so hopefully when you go to UKO you get a very balanced opinion of you know the educational side, but you know, what industry brings, what they're doing. And equally, it you know, a lot of uh the guys from industry are ex-healthcare workers, gives uh healthcare workers an opportunity to see what else there is beyond uh healthcare institutions that they work in, how they can pivot. You've pivoted successfully, um, are pivoted somewhat. Uh, but yeah, it's just it's been really good um working with everyone. It's a super happy team. Um, the selection process. So, you know, I I the presidency came up. Um, I was encouraged by a couple of people to go for it. Didn't think I would get it. I pitched my vision. Um, I think one of the things that I said that they liked was that one, I do not know what I'm doing here. And I, you know, as president, I probably won't know what I'm doing, but you know, I approach it like I would any other organization, any task. Like I'll surround myself with good people, uh, we'll figure out together. And again, you know, those lessons of morality and whatnot, working in the black and white zone, um, dealing with conflict, I know I don't need to have domain expertise in everything to be able to steer the ship. Um, we treat each other with respect. Um there's always going to be differences in opinion, someone's always gonna feel like they've got a short end of a stick. But you know, as long as we do it in a healthy, constructive way, have healthy uh conversations, um, I think, you know, yeah, touch wood. Um we're still happy. Um yeah, and I look forward to the event. What is it you enjoy most about being president? Yeah, just the sheer number of people that I've got to meet. Like, if I wasn't president, would we be doing this podcast now? Like, I'm whilst you're asking me these questions, like afterwards, I'm gonna be super interested in your story and what made you pivot from what you're doing before to how we are in this podcast room. So you get to meet loads of cool people. For me, I can I'm already looking out for the VPs that are coming up and how I can mentor them, coach them to be the best versions of themselves. I think when I'm done with UKO, as long as you know, at the end of it, I think I've given more than I've taken and I've helped a few people become the best versions of themselves and help to pick the next president. I think, yeah, it'll be job done.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

What advice would you give to your younger self, uh, the medical student at Bartz or the junior radiologist, knowing what you know now about what it takes to succeed in health and in healthcare innovation?

SPEAKER_00 36:50

One, I'm you know, I'm a big advocate of making mistakes and uh learning from them. I've developed um through, you know, through my mentorship and whatnot, a deeply reflective practice. And what I would say to a younger self is just uh we're so obsessed with times of adversity, or if things go wrong, we're so obsessed with what other people thinking of us. And what I realize is that there's there's no one apart from probably five or six people that are actually thinking of you when you go to sleep at night. So don't care about the failures and what other people think of you because the reality is they're not thinking about you. So dust yourself off and go again.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Um I think that's really valuable actually because I think it's really easy to fall into that habit of just beating yourself up over things that you've done wrong.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah, there's always when you when you fail, there's always an element of uh, you know, like I do complex uh endovascular cases, and you know, if if the case hasn't gone well, you're thinking like, well, what will my colleagues think of me and this and that? But no one's thinking about you, you know, everyone is focused on their own access and have other people that they're looking after. So, you know, don't lose sleep over what other people are going to be thinking of you because more than likely they're not. You've got a small tribe that have your back and are genuinely concerned about you, and you generally know who those people are. Um, and you know, you'll give forward, like you'll be there for those people. But you know, it takes a long time to be able to separate yourself from you know from these thoughts of what actually, you know, in those dark moments, um the reality, and we spend far too much time thinking about what other people think of us. Release yourself from that and just go ahead and go again, uh, make mistakes, learn from them, reflect from them, and be better next time.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah. Beyond UKIO, what's the one thing you want to be remembered for in your career? Not the publications or the titles, the impact of what you're doing. What's the one thing?

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Yeah, I think uh ultimately if people remember me as like he was a good guy, like he had he brought good energy when he he helped us. Um, I was always approachable. And those patient interactions, not necessarily in the actual case or the surgery, but how I treated them before the procedure and afterwards, just I guess want to be remembered as like he was like one of the good ones. Because you know, work in healthcare, you're all different kinds of personalities, right? Um, and again, a lot of this stuff, you know, my most transformative year on my mindset was being in Toronto. Um, I came out of it, like I went in Toronto, kind of like do you remember stars in your eyes? Yeah, like tonight, Matthew. Like when I came out of it, it's like tonight, Matthew, I'm gonna be a different shawl, and uh that was it. Yeah, like just stick to your principles, be a good guy, and um don't don't care what other people think about you. I remember um I did this fireside chat recently, and it was it's kind of high risk because I spoke a lot about maybe the dark side of what we do as healthcare physicians and whatnot. And you know, again, I did it with my mentor, Pascal, and um he just said to me, ultimately, you know, people who want to listen are gonna listen, those who are gonna be on their phones during it are gonna be on their phones, and those who already come with preconceived conceptions of the fact that it's gonna be trash. You can't change those, um you can't change those aspects of people's personalities. So we do these things to resonate with people who do have an openness in mindset um and a genuine willingness to want to improve and be better. Similar to this podcast, people are gonna listen, are gonna want to listen. Those who aren't, they're just gonna stop. Just keep scrolling, keep scrolling, exactly. So it's fine, you know. When I went to Toronto, I I'd worked in different health systems, I'd worked in different Angio Suites. I kind of like uh, you know, I always reference movies and whatnot. Like the last reference was stars in their eyes. Yeah, but I guess the you remember the Rocky movies. Yeah, do you know them well? Like a little, a little bit, yeah. So I was probably in my development, probably around Rocky II, right? So a finished training, get to a point where you think, you know, I can be a champ. This and that, you are a champ, you've had a lot of wins, and then suddenly, you know, you're on the floor, knocked out, and you gotta get back up. In Rocky III, it's like um, so he gets retrained by Apollo Creed, so and it's it's really, really different to how he was trained by Mickey and whatnot, right? In the first movies. So when I went met Pascal, it's like, you know, um, I'd gone through some bad moments. Um, like when I got to Toronto, uh, my mental health was like probably at the worst that it's ever been. Um just because I'm in a foreign place, different style of working, you know, you think you know, you think you know a lot about what you do because you finish your training in the UK in amazing centres, and then you get knocked out. Um, I remember he said, you know, he said to me, he's like, You've got two options here. Either you go home, you go to a place of safety, and you know, life will be good, or you can stay with me. And he said to me, he's like his words were like, I can make you indestructible at the end of it. So you go through that pain of you know like having to stay somewhere where you're not particularly happy, but equally, you know, you've got someone who's gonna coach you and mentor you to be the best version of yourself. Um, and that was it. That was like mindset changed. You've got someone who's gonna, you know, you associate with psychological safety and emotional regulation. And then, you know, when I came out of it, um, I was just, you know, that was the stars in your eyes where I could come back to the UK as someone, you know, who's so much stronger. From that moment on, it was just about, you know, having extremely strong moral groundings to be able to call out. Things that aren't particularly good in workplaces, to be able to support people in their darkest moments, to be able to provide healthcare, be a doctor in a better way than you know previously. And then one of the things that we worked on was this concept of Bushido. So when you approach any problem in life, or you know, you've got to go through life with a set of principles, right? Um, where do our moral ethics come from? A lot of it's upbringing, a lot of people use religion, a lot of people just use, you know, a set of principles that they've developed and refined over the years based on experience. But Bashida was essentially like seven principles that ancient samurais used to use in their practice. So it's like based on seven virtues of things like integrity, honesty, courage. Um, and we just applied these things to everything, like whether we're seeing a patient, whether we're doing a case, whether we're treating someone who needs our help. Um, so yeah, it was just like, you know, I still use those practices today. And no matter what life throws at you, whether it's in health techs, in UKIO, whether it's in like a case, if you apply these principles to everything, it doesn't matter what the outcome is. You stayed true to yourself and you can reconcile the not so good outcomes knowing that you gave it your all and you did everything in a moral way. And so you uh worked through the Bushido with Pascal. Was that yeah? He introduced me to these concepts. So we kind of treated so you know what I do is I work in an Anjou suite, we're doing cases side by side. The Anjo suite is the most sacred place in the hospital, it is your dojo where your grandmaster and a fellow can basically work in a very safe environment where you're allowed to make mistakes, and you're allowed to make mistakes, but you're allowed to learn from them afterwards, so you develop an extremely safe practice. You know, we've seen situations where uh people have lacked emotional regulation in intense, high-pressure environments, right? If you lack that emotional regulation, then what you find is that people you're trying to teach or people you want to follow you into difficult situations are not engaging the parts of the brain and the psyche that allows them to be the best versions of themselves. You know, what you want from your team is for them to be feel extremely safe, this concept of psychological safety, to be able to express themselves, bring ideas without worrying about the consequences of you know what that impact is on that leader. So, you know, we always operated on this uh assumption or the proactiveness that we create this environment of psychological safety for everyone in the room. Um, and that will bring the best aspects of your game to the procedure on the day. Um, and you know, I I still hear stories of where people don't necessarily feel safe to express themselves at work, they're worried about um consequences of their actions or an unwillingness to allow people to grow in the healthcare setting. Now I'm on the other side of it, and you know, I've had the coaching, I've had the training. As I progress through life, I'm just there to basically, you know, kind of level the playing field and help people to be the best versions of themselves and call out um bad behaviors and mistreatments. So um that's kind of what I want to be doing going forward. I remember I Pascal came to London and he said to me, we're just talking about you know where I was, where I am now, and then the future. So he said to me, What is your end game? And you know, the end game for me is not like to be all over LinkedIn or you know, be remembered as the president of UKIO, but really what I did in those roles when I was there, like the number of people that I helped, it can be anyone, you know. I think I read a lot about stuff like uh, you know, prioritization and um like you can't give from an empty cup and whatnot, and you should focus on yourself and whatnot. Yeah. For me personally, I'm just gonna keep giving. You know, I haven't dropped dead yet. If I've got, you know, if I'm working 20 hours a day most days or whatever I'm doing, like I'm still gonna help the guy who emails me to say, you know, hey Shah, I came across this and whatnot, just like just say yes, help them, say yes, figure out how you're gonna help them, and yeah, just keep going forward. Like we got one life here, and you have a finite amount of time on this earth to help as many people as you can. I've seen this with my parents, they're just like constantly helping people, like they never say no. And uh, I think yeah, I've just taken that with me. Um, so I'm just gonna keep doing it. Yeah, if you need my help, if I I don't even know if I can help. What I do know is that I can kind of usher you in the right direction. Um, and you know, my network's big enough now. Um that generally if someone needs a little bit, you know, a guiding hand, I can send them to the right person. But yeah, saying no is not what I do. Yeah. So I'm just gonna keep saying yes until I've you know I physically can't anymore. Yeah, yeah. That's how we've ended up here. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Do you think um I mean Pascal seems uh a really important part person in your life? Um do you think you what do you think your journey would have looked like if you didn't meet Pascal in Toronto?

SPEAKER_00 50:29

Yeah, I if I didn't meet Pascal, I probably would have achieved I would have been a you know, just by virtue of being at you know, within that unit and doing a fellowship uh abroad, my skills would have got better than you know had I left. Um but I wouldn't have had the coaching, um, you know, the there's no denying, you know, had worked with Pascal. There's a focus on you know technical proficiencies to a level that I'd never seen before. You know, he's one of the best at what he does in terms of operating, uh, creativity, imagination, so the technical aspects, he helped me massively. I still would have been better than when I left London, but not reach the technical proficiencies that he taught me. But as a person, I still wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't have known how to deal with adversity. Um, I still would have let things get to me. Um, I just wouldn't have the coaching of the mindset. You know, there are different themes of what we um were coached on in terms of mindset. And one of the themes of the year was chess, right? We can apply a chess game to any situation. If you're doing a case, a procedural case, um, you have to have a strategy, right? You have to know, you have to be five moves ahead of the disease process in that case. So if you can preempt five steps ahead, then you're gonna go really far in terms of circumventing complications because you've thought about it and you're always working on a worst-case scenario and um, you know, making moves within that case to circumvent the complications. However, in life as well, you know, you have to make decisions and you have to make strategic decisions in life that can help your career, um, help your family, and you just got to make the right chest move at the right time for whatever it is you're trying to win. Now, you know, I've said that, you know, I'm not interested in being the LinkedIn guy and whatnot. Um, but there may be someone it it that may provide a lot of um that may provide a win for someone else. Maybe someone else does want to be that guy. They will play a different game of chess, but they will strategically move those pieces to get them to wherever they want, right? Yeah, chess is super important, but you can only play the game to different levels. And the idea of the fellowship for me and Pascal was we're gonna get you from playing at a high level to being a grandmaster. Um I think we did that, but came out super strong. Um, can deal with stuff that I would never have imagined dealing with, you know, before. Um, like I said, my mental health was probably shot to pieces. But we I've never spoken to Pascal about you know where I was at my lowest, but I'm pretty sure he could see it. Um, but it was equally rewarding because uh, you know, when we left, um, like he could see that and when he comes back to London now, he can see that you know he played a pivotal role in my development, the confidence that I have, the ability to deal with situations. Um, and I'm not gonna let someone go through what I did. You know, now I'm in a position where I have fellows, yeah, they're looking to me as the boss. Yeah. So I'm gonna coach them and I'm gonna give them the best experience. And you know, whether or not they leave with the skills that they had hoped that they left with at the start of their journey with me, I know they're gonna leave with a friend and these bonds that tie us wherever they end up in the world, they can WhatsApp me and I'll be there. Like I said, don't say no, you answer the call, yeah. The the Batman sign goes up. Yeah, it's time for business for me.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Yeah, it's another movie analogy. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

A lot of movies, comic books, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

If you weren't a clinician today, what other career or role might you have pursued?

SPEAKER_00 54:51

Gosh. I know I wouldn't have pursued healthcare consultancy because I was a really good healthcare consultant. I was just not great for a business because I just like people, right? I don't want to bill you for my time. If I can give you something, some part of my brain or some experience, I'm just gonna do it. Um, I'm not gonna charge you for it. So as a result of working in healthcare consultancy, you know, it was hugely successful for me on different levels. But the friends that I made in it, like CEOs, will still call me up, they'll still WhatsApp me. Hey Shark, you got eyes on this? What do you think of this? What do you think our next move should be? Where do you see the market opportunity? Well, I mean, it's all in my brain, right? Yeah. I can I can do that. I don't want to charge you for it because I don't see you as a CEO, I see you as a person, I've got to know your families, I know your life, I know your struggles. So would I would I do healthcare consultancy? Um probably not, um, because I don't want to bill you for my time. Yeah. Um, what have I done? Um probably something creative, but in everything that I do, whether it's healthcare consultancy, um, being a doctor, um, like an academic, whatever, um, I don't think people see the creative side to my brain. So, you know, I loved, you know, starting from, you know, love taking something apart and rebuilding it. Um and more often than not, the the results have been pretty good. Um with UKIO because there's already a structure in place. Um, you know, you work within, you know, the the machine that it is, but as present I can still put my flavour on things, and that's gonna be nice. Um, but yeah, something that will engage my the creative side of my brain, architecture, design, all these things. Okay. Yeah. But if I could just uh work with people in their difficult times, you know, yeah, that would equally be rewarding.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Yeah. I get what you mean as well about charging people for that time.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

I think it's hard, right? Yeah, I've always been fortunate that I've you know I could do it alongside a medical career, right? Um but equally, if you're all in and your, you know, your kids, your family, the mortgages rely on you, you've got to be really, really disciplined with it. Um and yeah, people are gonna want your time and your expertise without wanting to pay for it. Um, and that's something, you know, you've got to be super disciplined with it. So, yeah, whilst I you know, I don't have the perfect answer because everyone's working under different circumstances. Um help where you can, but also know your value. And you know, what I have come to realise is people don't value something which comes for free. Um so whatever it is, wherever that nominal value is, yeah, you know your true self-worth, the value that you bring to some to table.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

Yeah. Okay. I've come to the end of all my questions now. Yeah. Um and that's been a really interesting chat. I've really I think for me the takeaway about um about just people and humanity, and um and what one thing that really is sticking in my mind is around the um black and white uh principles, yeah. And that's really sticking with me.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

And um gotta be a good guy in this game because when you're that hard on when you're that hard on terms of your moral standpoint, you can be slightly isolated. Um because you're gonna be surrounded by people that don't have those hard principles, right? So to survive in the game, you may feel that you know you may need to blur the lines, right, and operate in a grey area. And the grey area is not necessarily wrong because people's grey areas look different, right? They're people to willing to operate in different shades of grey. For me, you just keep it simple right is right, wrong is wrong. Um and you know, easier said than done, right? We're not perfect beings here. Whilst we have these principles, sometimes we're gonna fall short. And but the idea is that if you always start from an ideal and strive to for an ideal, then more often than not you're gonna be on the right side of right and wrong. We're not perfect beings, right? Yeah. Don't beat yourself up, don't um yeah you you have to know how to recover from a bad position. Um but if there's enough of us, we're gonna light these nodes between us and we're gonna generally congregate into our own tribe, which is gonna be strong enough and fulfilling enough for us to yeah, to be strong and do be the best versions of ourselves and be successful, whatever success may look like. You'd be surprised how many people aren't happy. You know, it can be a hollow journey, this the whole scene, the whole circuit. It it you know, it can be it takes a huge amount of work on yourself, self-realization to separate your true happiness from what the ego tells you should be making you happy. Um and you know, I can I can sit here and I can I can say all these things, I'm constantly working on myself. Like, I think the saddest thing is when you reach a point and you think, like, well, I don't need to work on myself anymore. But you do, you gotta get up, you gotta wake up with the right intentions, and you gotta go to sleep thinking, What did I do right today? What did I do wrong? It's this you're always constantly on the axis of infinity, it never stops. The minute you stop, you're in trouble, yeah, because you can't get better, but this acceptance that we are gonna fail, but we do know we want to get better, and when we do want to get better, who can we reach out to in our trying? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:09

Definitely cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Thank you, Shah. Thanks for having me.