Consultant Anaesthetist · Prehabilitation pioneer · Visiting Professor
Getting patients fit for surgery and cancer treatment — safely, fairly and at scale.
Professor Tara Rampal MBBS FRCA designs and leads prehabilitation services that improve outcomes, widen access and bring proven digital care into the NHS.
QuestPrehab · HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2026
Winner: Surgical Care Safety Initiative of the Year
As featured in
The Times
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC South East
NHS England Digital Playbook
NHS Providers
Digital Health
Award for the service she founded
QuestPrehab wins at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2026
The QuestPrehab digital prehabilitation programme, delivered with West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, won Surgical Care Safety Initiative of the Year. It is part of the first fully technology-enabled colorectal cancer pathway in the NHS, preparing patients physically and mentally before and after surgery.
2026
HSJ Patient Safety Award — QuestPrehab
2024
Healthcare Awards, Excellence in Telehealth — QuestPrehab
2020
Prehab Unit rated Outstanding by the CQC
2019
ERAS® Society — Best Perioperative Success Story
Founder
Two services she built from the ground up
QuestPrehab
An award-winning digital prehabilitation service: personalised exercise, nutrition and psychological support for patients preparing for surgery and cancer treatment.
Kent & Medway Prehab
The NHS prehabilitation service that began at Medway NHS Foundation Trust, winning the ERAS® Society award in 2019 and featuring in NHS England’s Digital Playbook.
About
A clinician who builds services, not just studies them
Tara is a practising NHS Consultant Anaesthetist who trained at the Barts and The London School of Anaesthesia, where she won the Excellence Award for Academic Achievement and completed a research fellowship in high-risk surgery.
She founded the award-winning Prehab Unit at Medway NHS Foundation Trust, which grew into Kent & Medway Prehab, and now leads the Perioperative Prehab Unit at King’s College Hospital, with a three-year NHS grant focused on health inequalities. She also founded QuestPrehab, which takes that model to patients across the NHS and internationally.
She completed the Leadership in Population Health programme at The King’s Fund, supervises anaesthesia residents and PhD students, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich since 2022.
Current roles
- Consultant Anaesthetist & Lead, Perioperative Prehab Unit
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - Founder
QuestPrehab · Kent & Medway Prehab - Visiting Professor
University of Greenwich - MBBS, FRCA
Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists
Featured work
Prehabilitation in practice
Award-winning · 2025–26
A fully digital colorectal cancer pathway
With West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals: personalised exercise, nutrition and psychological programmes before and after surgery. The programme won an HSJ Patient Safety Award in 2026.
Transplant · 2024–25
Home-based prehab for liver transplant
With the South West Liver Unit, Plymouth: virtually delivered prehab improved both quality of life and Liver Frailty Index scores (BASL 2025).
Equity · King’s College Hospital
Closing the gap in who gets prehab
A new CPET service and prehab interventions across surgical groups, backed by a three-year NHS South East London ICB Health Inequalities Grant.
Research
Selected publications
Principal Investigator on COPE (2020), POISE-3 — first UK site (2019) and PREPARE-ABC (2018).
Speaking
Keynotes, panels and teaching on four continents
Invited speaker at ISPRM (Lisbon and Orlando), AANEM (San Francisco), McMaster’s review course in Kraków, Shanghai, Dubai, the Royal Marsden, the Royal College of Surgeons, The King’s Fund, NHS Providers and the HSJ Patient Safety Congress.
Digital prehabilitation at scale
What it takes to move from pilot to an NHS-wide service.
Prehab as patient safety
Fewer cancellations and complications through optimisation before surgery.
Equity and cultural competence
Designing perioperative care that reaches every community.
Overcoming barriers to implementation
Evidence-led lessons for commissioners and clinical teams.
Media & thought leadership
Writing, broadcast and podcasts
Entrepreneurs trying to save the NHS with technology
Prehabilitation: the evidence, the ingredients and what comes next
Also: BBC Radio 5 Live on the Darzi Report · Yes to Life podcast · Hospital Hub · Health Tech World · RCoA Bulletin. All media →
Get in touch
Speaking, media or collaboration
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