Dr. Vivek Patkar

Dr. Vivek Patkar is an Indian-born oncologist and clinical AI researcher who has dedicated his career to improving the quality of cancer treatment decisions through artificial intelligence. He qualified in medicine in 1995 at Grant Medical College in Mumbai (then Bombay), India, before training as a surgical oncologist at the Tata Memorial Hospital — India's largest tertiary cancer centre. He subsequently specialised further as a breast surgeon at Tata Memorial between 1997 and 2003, developing a thorough understanding of the clinical decision-making challenges in oncology multidisciplinary settings.

In 2003, Vivek moved to London to pursue research in breast cancer, initially working as a senior breast registrar at Guy's Hospital before joining the Advanced Computation Lab at Cancer Research UK as a research fellow in 2004. There he began the work that would define his subsequent career: applying AI and expert systems to clinical decision support, developing tools that translated evidence-based guidelines into transparent, explainable recommendations for doctors. His work resulted in multiple peer-reviewed publications and the development of clinical applications piloted in NHS settings at UCL's Royal Free Hospital.

This research ultimately led to the spin-out of Deontics from Oxford University, University College London, and Cancer Research UK. As Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer, Vivek has overseen the clinical knowledge engineering underpinning Deontics' platform — a system that processes patient-specific data against clinical guidelines to generate personalised treatment recommendations for clinicians across primary and secondary care, with applications including cancer, prostate, and emergency medicine pathways.

Vivek's clinical publications include influential work on the use of computerised decision support in cancer multidisciplinary team meetings, published in BMJ Open and the British Journal of Cancer, and more recently a 2025 paper in BJU International demonstrating AI-driven streamlining of prostate cancer MDT recommendations at a UK NHS trust. His career stands as a bridge between the complexities of Indian medical training and the frontier of AI-driven healthcare in the UK.