Work
Prehabilitation in practice
Services Tara has designed and led, from a single NHS unit to digital programmes delivered across the country.
Award-winning · 2025–26
A fully digital colorectal cancer pathway
West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust became the first NHS trust to offer a complete, technology-enabled colorectal cancer pathway. Its digital prehabilitation element, delivered through QuestPrehab, gives patients individualised exercise, nutrition and psychological wellbeing programmes before and after surgery, in a year-long programme for 300 patients.
- Winner, Surgical Care Safety Initiative of the Year — HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2026
- Presented at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Future of Surgery conference
Transplant · 2024–25
Home-based prehab for patients awaiting liver transplant
A 12-month programme offering virtually delivered prehabilitation to 50 patients waiting for a liver transplant across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, with digital exercise classes and support sessions developed with the hospital team, to ease anxiety and improve frailty while patients wait.
- Improvements in both quality of life and Liver Frailty Index scores, presented to the British Association for the Study of the Liver (2025)
Equity · Current
Closing the gap in who gets prehab
As Lead for the Perioperative Prehab Unit at King’s College Hospital, Tara developed the cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) service and prehabilitation across surgical groups, with a focus on equity of access to care.
- Three-year recurring Health Inequalities Grant for Prehabilitation from NHS South East London ICB
- Quality improvement to reduce on-the-day cancellations in high-risk hip and knee replacement patients (ERAS UK 2025)
- Research on cultural competence and health disparities in perioperative care
- Featured in Digital Health and visited by the local MP
Founder · NHS
Kent & Medway Prehab
Tara founded the Prehab Unit at Medway NHS Foundation Trust and grew it into Kent & Medway Prehab: a telehealth-delivered, home-based multimodal programme that went from three clustered centres to a service receiving referrals from nine NHS acute trusts and primary care networks.
Peer-reviewed evaluations of the service showed meaningful gains in quality of life, and NHS England published it as a case study, reporting 76% acceptance and 72% adherence.
- ERAS® Society award — Best Perioperative Success Story, 2019
- Rated Outstanding in the Trust’s Care Quality Commission inspection, 2020
- Featured on BBC South East News, 2020
- Case study in NHS England’s Perioperative Digital Playbook
Founder · Digital
QuestPrehab
Tara founded QuestPrehab to make personalised, multimodal prehabilitation (physical activity, nutrition, psychological support and education) available to patients wherever they live.
Developing a prehabilitation service?
Tara works with NHS trusts, commissioners and researchers on service design and evaluation.