Digital Health, From the Patient and Athlete Perspective: Interview With Heidi Dohse

In this episode of The EP Edit, we’re talking with Heidi Dohse. Heidi is a Senior Program Manager focused on Healthcare for Google's Cloud Platform. She works with Google partners, including Fitbit, to develop health-based wearable devices and health analytics capabilities. She is a professional heart patient and founding member of the Health eHeart Study. Heidi is passionate about improving patient outcomes. She partners with physicians and researchers around the world to better empower individuals so that they can live active and healthy lives. She travels globally educating audiences on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), data and healthcare.

Heidi is a trailblazer. In 1982, Heidi was diagnosed with a rare heart arrhythmia. She underwent a successful AV ablation procedure, leaving her heartbeat 100% pacemaker dependent. Heidi had open-chest surgery in 2010, and with the help of her pacemaker, wearable devices, and applications, she had the data she needed to get from the hospital bed to the finish line of a 50-mile bike race. Armed with her heart rate data and trained analytics, she now competes in endurance cycling events around the world. Having completed multiple 200-mile, single-day bike races and multi-day MTB stage races, her next personal challenge is training her pacemaker to run and swim complete her first Ironman event November 2019. Heidi is a living example of how emerging capabilities in healthcare can enable patients to live life to the fullest.

In this interview, Jodie Elrod, Managing Editor of EP Lab Digest, asks Heidi for her perspectives on how digital health can help empower patients.

For more information about Heidi, please also be sure to check out her non-profit organization, Tour de Heart.

Please also be sure to check out our interview with Heidi in EP Lab Digest’s July 2015 issue, in which she discussed her 30-plus year journey as a heart patient.