PhD Researcher, Health Data Scientist & Early Stage Investor

Sara Sousi

Translating complex health data into actionable insights. Specialising in AI-driven prediction models, machine learning, and digital health interventions to improve patient outcomes.

Sara Sousi
22+ Publications
£120k NIHR Funding

Bridging Data Science & Healthcare

PhD candidate at Imperial College London, funded by the NIHR, with a strong interdisciplinary background spanning both academia and industry. I specialise in applying advanced statistical and machine learning methods to real-world hospital data across multiple disease areas.

A former healthcare and life sciences consultant at EY, I now lead large-scale data analyses using UK Biobank, CPRD, and WSIC datasets. My research focuses on gestational diabetes mellitus, maternal health outcomes, and digital health interventions.

I possess technical fluency in R, Python, and SQL, combined with strategic insight from high-impact NHS and life sciences projects. Passionate about translating complex data into actionable insights that improve patient outcomes and accelerate digital transformation in healthcare.

22+
Publications
16
Active Projects
60M+
Patient Records Analysed
5+
Years Experience

Professional Journey

Nov 2025 — Present

Investor Partner

Proximo Ventures, London

Driving early-stage investments in pre-seed/seed healthcare startups from Imperial, Cambridge, and Oxford.

Oct 2025 — Present

Social Media Editor

BMJ Quality & Safety, London

Curating and scheduling science communication content to enhance the journal's international visibility across X, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

March 2025 — Present

Doctoral Research Fellow

Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London

Collaborating on studies across digital health, AMR, and women's health projects. Leading quantitative analysis of North West London EHR using WSIC datasets.

June 2024 — Present

Researcher - Statistician

MSk Lab, Imperial College London

Led end-to-end linkage of UK Biobank and wearables datasets. Analysed CPRD (60M patients; 500GB). Co-authored 10+ studies leading statistical methodologies.

May 2023 — Jan 2025

Senior Data Analyst / Strategy Consultant

EY Parthenon, London

Led opportunity sizing for NHS One Digital Citizen (£3.5M business case). Reviewed $7B pharmaceutical portfolio forecasts. Developed MCDA framework for NHS Digital Channels.

2023 — 2026

Honorary Research Fellow

Division of Surgery & Interventional Science, UCL

Leading all data analyses including NLP sentiment analysis. Co-author of 10+ peer-reviewed publications. Contributed to development of AesthetiSim metaverse platform.

Sept 2021 — April 2023

Data Analyst / Strategy Consultant

EY Parthenon, London

Only consultant in the history of the team to promote early. \n Applying data science, machine learning, and healthcare sector expertise to deliver insights and solutions across a diverse portfolio of client-facing projects. Opened a new revenue stream for a health exchange information entity in the MENA region due to a research piece linking population health and dental data. Supported ICBs in their Elective Recovery Programme, building capacity & demand models, KPI dashboards, and demand forecasting.

2021 — 2024

Honorary Research Fellow

King's Health Partners, King's College London

Principal bioinformatician of the CEDiD study - prediction of COVID-19 infection using pervasive monitoring. Analysed 100GB wearable data. Co-authored 5 published papers.

2021

App Developer

Virtuoso (start-up)

Developed the prototype of the mobile application using Flutter of Virtuoso, a MedEd / EdTech start up. Virtuoso entered demo day of London's unis (Imperial, UCL, KCL) and was powered by King's Accelerator andraised grant funding from Centre for Innovation & Development, Google Startups, and Amazon Startups

Academic Background

PhD Clinical Medical Research — AI for Healthcare

Imperial College London

March 2025 — Present

Title: A Data-Driven and AI-Enabled Evaluation of Remote Care in Women with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Supervisors: Professor the Lord Ara Darzi, Dr Ana Luísa Neves

Funding: Full PhD Studentship by NIHR Patient Safety Research Collaboration (£120,000)

MRes Bioinformatics — Distinction (75%)

Imperial College London

2019 — 2020

Research projects in cancer biology, programming, statistics, and bioinformatics.

• ANO6: A Potential Novel Prognostic Biomarker for Breast Cancer
• LASSO risk model for ovarian cancer prognosis
• Epigenetic exposure signatures in ovarian cancer

BSc (Hons) Mathematics

University of Warwick

2016 — 2019

Notable modules: Differential Equations (83%), Linear Algebra (80%), MATLAB Programming (90%), Introduction to Systems Biology (93%), Stochastic Processes (80%)

Technical Expertise

Programming & Tools

R Python SQL Snowflake GitHub / Git Bash Alteryx Power BI DNA Nexus (UKB) LaTeX

Statistical & ML Methods

PCA PSM Clustering Supervised ML Unsupervised ML Survival Analysis Biostatistics Meta-Analysis & NMA Systematic Reviews

Data & Healthcare

UK Biobank CPRD WSIC HES Data Electronic Health Records Real World Evidence Wearables Data Bioinformatics

Languages

English (Native) Greek (Native) Spanish (B1) French (IGCSE) Russian (A1)

Selected Research

Unsupervised Machine Learning Models Reveal Two Distinct Post-Operative Physical Activity Profiles Among Joint Arthroplasty Patients: A United Kingdom Biobank Cohort Study

Arthroplasty, September 2025 — Editor's Choice Publication

Free Tissue Transfer for the Management of Diabetic Lower Limb Ulcers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Microsurgery, July 2025

COVID-19 Early Detection in Doctors and Healthcare Workers (CEDiD) study: a cohort study on the feasibility of wearable devices

BMJ Open, 2025

A comparison of acellular dermal matrices (ADM) efficacy and complication profile in women undergoing implant-based breast reconstruction: a systematic review and network meta-analysis

BMC Cancer, 2024

A systematic review of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in Plastic Surgery

JPRAS, April 2024

22+ peer-reviewed publications spanning genomics, wearable monitoring, large-scale public health datasets, and digital health.

View full publication list on Google Scholar, Research Gate or request CV.

Awards & Grants

Imperial Global Fellows Fund — Turing Grant

2025/26

NIHR PSRC PhD Studentship

2025-2028 • £120k

ASiT x PLASTA Hackathon

2023 • Royal College of Surgeons

AWS Social Sustainability Award

2022 • PLASTA x Royal Free Hackathon

Let's Connect

Interested in collaboration, research opportunities, or just want to say hello? I'd love to hear from you.