Eric Prostowski Hi, I'm Eric Prostowski and welcome to a very special event, the 50th episode of EP on EP. And we've had a great run and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. During this time, we have interviewed three presidents for the Heart Rhythm Society. We've welcomed our new CEO, Pat Blake, into the society, as well as saying goodbye to James Youngblood, who marshaled the society for many years. We've covered many topics of a wide range with experts from the United States and around the world. And I look forward to the upcoming episodes. Please let us know if there are topics you would like to see, and we'll do our very best to include them. And now, enjoy the interview with our new president, Christine Alpert. Eric Prostowski Hi, this is Eric Prostowski and welcome to another segment of EP on EP. What a delight today to have with us, Dr. Christine Albert, who is president of the Heart Rhythm Society. And that's where, Christine, I'm going to ask most of my questions, but she's also the chief of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. And Christine, I'm going to ask you to talk about your plans for this year as president. I'd like to start with something that I'm not sure all the membership knows, but it's clear to some of the old timers. This is the first back-to-back woman president of the society. I would liken it to the famous Yankee lineup of Babe Ruth batting third and Lou Gehrig batting fourth. I don't know anything about baseball, but at any rate, it's great to see back-to-back women presidents. And Christine, welcome to the show and tell us what are your plans for HRS this year? Well, thank you, Eric. First, I do want to acknowledge that that is really a momentous occasion that, and both Andrea and I were really excited to work alongside of each other. And we really hope to continue to see more women and more diversity in the Heart Rhythm Society, which you and other leaders have supported over the years. This is a different year. It's not as we expected. A lot of times what the president is doing is traveling around and meeting people, and I'm not going to be doing that this year. So there's a lot of meetings and a lot of virtual connections that we are making with some of our international societies. But I think for me this year, what I look at this is we have a new strategic plan that's coming up in October. And the strategic plan really was designed over a year by the Board of Trustees with input from multiple groups. We had some younger members called the Pathfinders involve us, inform us about what they would like to see. And so we came up with four pillars. And I look at this year as a really great opportunity to move forward on that because really everybody is not traveling. Everybody is sort of a captive audience. And so our members that work in our committees and are participating in our communities are there and ready to really try and move HRS forward. So the plan actually interestingly had a huge piece of it being that we wanted to expand our education and our reach and go beyond necessarily our national meeting. And that's really important this year because we have done that with going to a virtual meeting. And we've sort of been forced into this world that we predicted, but we didn't predict to this extent that this would happen. Other goals besides elevating education is to really become at the forefront of innovation and research. As you know, HRS has never had the ability to fund research. But we're hoping that we can create systems to support our members that are doing so and really give them forums. This whole virtual interaction that we have really opens up new ways that we can collaborate and that HRS can support that. And then finally, we really want to become a leader in digital health. And we have new journals that have come out that will be addressing that, but also leaders in technology. And so we have new committees that will be doing that. So there's a lot to do this year. But for me, I really want to see us continue to elevate the field of heart rhythm treatment and prevention and really make it as much of an inclusive community as possible. And so hopefully by being able to reach out to people virtually, we can do that. That's a lot to do in one year. It is a lot. But you know what? Like I tell my fellows, if you strive for mediocrity and you achieve it, what have you really achieved, right? Right. Exactly. Can I hit a couple of those areas? Yes, sure, please. I think it's a wonderful goal. So mentoring. So mentoring has always been a big part of the society. It's always been a top-down mentoring. Is that going to be part of your plans? And if so, how do you figure that? Often eyeball to eyeball is how you get the best results. Yeah. I mean, we can't do that. So what have you thought about that? You know, how do you bring the next group up? I mean, that's part of the role of being an officer and president. Right. So we have been trying to involve more younger people in communities. We actually, and I think we wanted to talk a little bit about our meeting later, but we actually are thinking of also bringing in a group of younger people to help to advise us about meetings in the future. As far as mentorship, I've always had a situation personally where a lot of my mentees are not based in my own institution, as you have. And so why can't we do that? Why can't HRS help to facilitate that? And the research committee had come up with an idea called Research Connect, which would make connections between people who say wanted to do a certain type of research in there, but there wasn't that specialty in their area, in their hospital. They could reach out and work with other people. So again, I think that, you know, a lot of this is going to be upon us to create the tools to make those sort of virtual connections, but also to really involve younger people in the society, you know, not just have it be, you know, the older age group like us. And that's always, you know, been a challenge, but I know they're really excited with great ideas. So, and I think those connections happen a lot of times, and a lot of times I'll tell people who say they want to get involved with HRS, I say, do it. No matter what the committee is, no matter what it is, go ahead and volunteer for it because you'll meet somebody who will then be your connection, who then might suggest you for something else. And when you do a great job, people notice. So I think that, you know, it's really, really critical in this particular time, as you point out. And I think HRS can create ways for people to network virtually. Yeah. And I think you have an interesting opportunity out of this mess, and that is, well, one of the things I learned, while I love being there personally and doing meetings, just yesterday for the first time in two years, I was able to make a meeting that typically is right in the middle of my workday because it was on Zoom. And it was, even though it's downtown Indianapolis, it's a committee I'm on, and I rarely get a chance to actually be at the meeting, but it was right after I got done seeing patients and I got on it. So in a sense, by having the ability for Zoom, and I'm wondering if you're going to do this, you can enlarge the pool. So for example, there's nothing special, right, about saying there's eight people on the committee or 10. I mean, a lot of it is practical because you can't, how much expense do you have bringing people? But this might give you, Christine, the opportunity to enlarge the pool since it's not any more money and maybe this could be an opportunity. Yeah. No, I think it lends a lot. And it also shows you, like you said, like you made that meeting. Almost all of the meetings that I've been involved in at HRS have been well attended because people are available. And that was one of my points about trying, this could be a year we could get a lot done because people aren't on a plane. They are in their offices and they can, like if we said, hey, Eric, we want you to help us with this. We might be able to do it where you might not have last year. So I agree with you. I think that we have already done that with one of the initiatives that I know you're somewhat involved in the HRSTV. You know, we are reaching out to the community and trying to get people from even outside our committees involved in that, but also connecting it to our committee volunteers. So yeah, it's really, and I think also we can even begin to think, and I know this is really ambitious, but think about patients and really reaching out to patients with our society. You know, again, we've talked about that over the years. How do we, how do we have, you know, AHA has patient members. We've never done that, but how do we do that? Well, we have to become relevant to them. And so part of it is creating content that's useful, that's useful for our members, but also useful for our patients. So that's something else we've thought. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but actually that was going to be my next question to you. I think where we have not been as good as we always want it to be is patients and patient education. This may be your opportunity. I like that, Christine, because, you know, we're not always the first site patients go to. I mean, you see patients. I mean, I, you know, I jumped on our interview today after seeing patients all morning and not infrequently people have searched the internet. And even though we have great material, we're not the first person they search. So this gives you a wonderful opportunity to maybe move, move that up the line. So it's the first place we search, right? Yeah. Patient search. So I'm going to ask you to give us a very brief thing, because I know you're, it's early in the year. Give us a preview of what, let's assume something, which I surely hope we both agree would happen. That is we can fly, right? We can fly and we'll be at the, at the annual scientific sessions in May. Having said that, my guess is HRS is going to change them some way. So without going into too much detail, can you give us a little hint what you think May is like? Sure. So Andrew Kron is our program chair this year. And he is, is working together and, and we're working very closely with them on a plan that will be both in person and virtual. With the idea that if God forbid we can't travel, that it can be virtual. This year, Fred Kusumoto and, and the staff did an amazing job at like, you know, writing the ship 90 degrees, right? I thought they did a great job. Yeah. Yeah. They did a great job. So we need more time to think about it and how we can deliver a virtual experience in addition to a live experience. Even before this happened, we and others had had declines in meeting attendants, not a lot. I mean, HRS actually has been doing very, very well, but there's still difficulty traveling because the support for traveling is not always there from either the institution or people being able to leave their practices. So going forward, I think it's going to be ideal to have sort of a dual offering. So for people that can't travel, they can still be part of it. But of course, you know, one of the major we actually did a survey of the membership and we are going to share those results with the membership. But one of the things that was the biggest comment about HRS 2020 is that we really want our in-person meeting, that everybody misses being together. But there were very good suggestions about how to make it more interactive and how to make it so that, you know, it's available to people when they want to view it. So we're working down both avenues and also there's sort of a long-term plan that we're working on, you know, beyond this year, what do we do for the next year and the year after? Because this whole pandemic has changed our societies to such an extent that I'm not sure that we ever completely go back. So we need to move forward. And so we are definitely taking that very seriously, creating task force, getting input from a variety of stakeholders, because it's really the jewel in our crown. We really want to make sure we continue to make it a wonderful meeting and really engaging for all of our members. I think that's great. Well, before I end, let me just say that the one thing I love this year, for the first time in decades, I could make all the late breakers. So I'll put my plug in for a timely online late breakers, because no matter who you are and how many things you try to get to, you just can't make them all. And it was wonderful just to sit down for a few hours and when it was, you know, casual to go through them. So I'll put my plug in for at least late breakers also online. Yeah, no, we're going to do that and more too. So you have a full year ahead of you. I love the fact you've got some great plans. I think HRS is extremely fortunate to have someone with your capabilities to run this crazy year. You have wonderful people skills. I've known you for years. I'm just telling you that. So I know you can't be in person, try to make as many video conferences with our colleagues around the country and around the world, because you represent us and I'm sure you do a great job and good luck for the crazy year. Thank you. Thank you for being on the interview. You take care of yourself. Okay. Thank you. You too, Eric. Thanks for having me.

Heart Rhythm Society

strategic plan

digital health

COVID-19 pandemic

annual scientific sessions