Queen's Birthday Honours: Crawley scientist receives MBE for services to radiotherapy

Kevin Brown is receiving the honour for his services to radiotherapy.

The 66-year-old is currently the scientist and research leader at Elekta’s Image Guided Radiotherapy Consortium, based in Crawley.

Kevin told SussexWorld: “I was very happy when I received the news, I am incredibly honoured.

“The letter from the cabinet office went through the wrong door because they got my address wrong. So, it got delivered to a neighbour down the street.

"So, this whole thing almost didn't happen as I wouldn't have been able to accept it.”

Kevin, born in Crawley, has dedicated his career to enhancing the capability of radiotherapy to deliver improved patient outcomes.

In the last 20 years, he has been instrumental in two breakthrough developments in the way Linear Accelerators (Linacs) are used in the treatment of cancer globally.

The first was the development of a CT scanner that could be integrated into the Linac and used during the treatment process, as well as the introduction of MR Guidance running continuously at the same time as the treatment.

This led to Image Guided Radiotherapy becoming the standard-of-care worldwide for many cancer diagnoses, with around 80% of new Linacs delivered with CT capability, meaning more than 6 million patients have been treated more accurately and spared side effects.

Kevin said on his career: “I’ve been working away for the last 42 years trying to make radiotherapy technology better to help clinicians treat patients better and get better outcomes. Meaning more patients are cured and there are fewer side effects.

“It’s been more of a vocation than a job that I have committed my life to. It’s nice to get the recognition of a life-long commitment to make that happen.

“Along the journey I've worked with clinicians and scientists from all over the world. I’ve collaborated with leading academic radiation oncology centres in every continent.

“We’ve worked together on changing radiotherapy, so we have absolutely transformed radiotherapy from something that is quite primitive to now being really advanced.

“I'm still doing it, which is an amazing thing, it's been a really wonderful career I must say.”