Qura says the ultrasound shortage is about visibility as well as numbers
With around 1 in 4 sonography posts vacant across the UK, healthcare workforce platform Qura is setting out to help sonographers, services and suppliers find one another faster.
The Society of Radiographers’ 2025 Ultrasound Census, published in March 2026, put the UK sonography vacancy rate at 24.2%, rising to 25.3% in the NHS. That is 11.6 percentage points higher than in 2019.
Demand keeps rising. At the end of February 2026, 645,500 people in England were waiting for a non-obstetric ultrasound scan, the largest single group on the NHS diagnostic waiting list. Many of those scans sit in men’s health, from the testicular lump that needs looking at quickly to the aortic aneurysm screening every man in England is invited to in the year he turns 65.
Qura was founded by Ola Folawiyo and Dr Olamide Okulaja. Folawiyo, co-founder and chief executive, has worked commercially on a national community diagnostic centre (CDC) sonography programme. NHS England expects CDCs to open at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a minimum of 154 ultrasound scans a week for a 7-day service.
Folawiyo said: “That programme taught me that a national vacancy rate says very little about a particular rota. Availability changes from town to town, by specialty, by experience and by whether someone wants a permanent post, bank shifts or a few sessions a week. Two services can advertise the same job title and need very different people, while the sonographer who would happily take either role is invisible to both.”
According to Qura, the people best placed to solve the problem seldom see one another. Sonographers keep their own networks and job boards, agencies and insourcing providers hold their own candidate lists, and trusts and CDCs run their own recruitment.
The platform brings them into one place. Sonographers and other clinicians create a single free profile, with their professional registration checked, and become visible to the employers and agencies on the platform. Services post roles on Qura and matching clinicians are alerted straight away. Agencies can bring the clinicians they represent with them, and suppliers can see live NHS tenders and the named decision-makers behind them. Qura runs on the web and as an app on iPhone and Android.
Dr Okulaja, co-founder and chief growth officer, said: “Technology cannot train a sonographer, and artificial intelligence should never stand in for the judgement of clinicians, workforce teams or specialist suppliers. Its value is in the admin: checking a registration, matching a profile to a role, summarising a tender. That gives people more time for the decisions only people can make.”
Folawiyo added: “No single platform will close a 24.2% gap. A more visible, better connected market can help the people already working on it close it faster. We would like to hear from sonographers, service leads and suppliers who are working on this.”
More information is available at qurahealth.org.
This news story has been sponsored by the companies concerned and does not represent the views or opinions of RAD Magazine.
