Published on 01 April 2026
A member of Benenden Hospital’s Imaging team has been named the UK winner of the Unsung Heroes of Healthcare award from Doctify, an independent healthcare review platform.
Sadie Ridley, Advanced Practice Sonographer, won the national accolade for her work in establishing and leading a liver scanning ultrasound service – the South East region's first – at Benenden Hospital.
Sadie identified a gap in the market which the hospital could help to fill and support our consultants, community GPs, hepatology departments and gastroenterology colleagues with the ongoing care of a wide spectrum of patients using the most advanced, innovative diagnostic equipment.
With the support of Imaging department colleagues, Sadie saw this idea to fruition, and the new service has streamlined patient pathways by providing a previously unavailable, comprehensive liver assessment which potentially avoids invasive intervention.
The judging panel from Doctify commented: "Sadie’s nomination stood out for her remarkable drive to transform a gap in diagnostic care. By driving the implementation of the South East’s first advanced liver scanning service, she has reduced the journey to intervention for over 300 patients to date. But the true scale of her impact lies in the future; she has established a pioneering service that will improve countless lives."
Sadie said: "The award was unexpected and extremely welcome. I feel honoured that I was put forward for the award and hugely grateful to everyone here at Benenden Hospital for giving me a chance to put the initial idea into practice. It took a lot of support from my manager, Emma, and our Director of Clinical Services, but being listened to, and their unwavering belief in me and my idea has been amazing."
She added: "The initial idea to introduce the service stemmed from a BMUS conference that I was presenting at, and I attended a lecture by Professor Adrian Lim on liver ultrasound and was inspired by his lecture. I spoke to Adrian after the lecture and we had a really good discussion about liver elastography and the potential it offers for diagnosing liver disease. He was so enthusiastic and forward-thinking that I researched liver elastography and contacted the GI consultants here at Benenden, who were really passionate about early diagnosis of liver disease, and were keen to use liver elastography to diagnose early liver disease, which can be undetectable with conventional imaging modalities until it is too advanced to treat with medication. Fibroscan was currently the only option available at the time."
Addressing an emerging global public health crisis
Liver disease is an emerging global public health crisis, and a disease that can often progress without symptoms, complicating early identification and delaying potentially life-saving treatment. Having fast access to this scan at our hospital is very beneficial for this reason. The sooner a patient has an assessment of any fibrous or fatty infiltration of their liver, the sooner lifestyle or medicated interventions can be made to reverse any liver damage.
The introduction of the service followed landmark NICE guidance citing liver ultrasound as one of the best techniques for assessing and detecting early liver disease. As well as visualising liver tissue and surrounding organs, the software can provide an accurate assessment of the density of a patient’s liver while assessing for signs of disease.
Sadie’s research has since brought the expertise of Benenden Hospital’s Imaging department to international attention. She was invited to present an abstract on the service at BMUS Ultrasound 2024 and in 2026 was invited to share abstracts of her research papers, co-authored with colleague Pauline Mellor, at the prestigious European Congress of Radiology (ECR) – one of the largest medical meetings in Europe and the second-largest radiological meeting in the world.
To read more about The Unsung Heroes of Healthcare and see the full winner's list, visit the Doctify website