Surgeon turned minister Ara Darzi discusses his vision for the future

Labour peer Lord Brennan has particular reason to be thankful for Gordon Brown’s choice of cabinet colleagues. When the barrister collapsed in the Lords last November during a debate on the human fertilisation and embryology bill, the prime minister’s newly- appointed health minister Prof Ara Darzi sprang into action and performed heart massage until paramedics arrived and took Brennan to hospital.

It was headline-grabbing stuff, and while the first-aid administered by Darzi was a world away from the advanced techniques that the leading surgeon has helped pioneer, the incident helped to underline his credentials as a starring member of Brown’s so-called ’government of all talents’.

Head of surgery at Imperial College, and a consultant surgeon at both St Mary’s hospital and the Royal Marsden, Darzi is widely regarded as one of the world leaders in the field of minimally invasive, or keyhole, surgery.

A champion of new techniques and technologies, he was notably the first surgeon in the UK to use the Da Vinci robot, a tele-operated machine that allows surgeons to perform procedures with increased precision.