Sudhanshu Patwardhan is a British-Indian U.K.-licensed medical doctor, passionate about health tech innovation in cancer prevention. For the past two decades, he has lived and worked on three continents, holding senior roles in research, strategy, and policy in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries.

 In his early years in tobacco harm reduction, his team of clinical researchers and lab scientists set the foundations for the assessment of reduced-risk products, now accepted by regulators and the industry as the definitive approach for duty-of-care and regulatory compliance. At Nicoventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of BAT, he was instrumental in enabling the first e-cigarette company acquisition by a global tobacco business, leading to a successful application for a medical license with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for an e-cigarette. In his policy role there, Patwardhan shaped the creation of a global key opinion leader network in consumer advocacy and public health champions. With the British Standards Institution (BSI), Patwardhan led the creation of the world’s first vaping product standards for safety and quality in 2015 and the BSI Online Age Checking specifications in collaboration with the Westminster-based Digital Policy Alliance in 2018.

 Patwardhan splits his time between the U.K. and South Asia on projects that address the needs of the most disadvantaged tobacco users. In 2018, he co-founded the Centre for Health Research and Education to work on projects in smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction. Since 2021, Patwardhan has been working with digital tech partners for innovating oral cancer screening.