HRX 2024: Interview With Jennifer Avari Silva, MD, FHRS, and Suneet Mittal, MD, FHRS

© 2024 HMP Global. All Rights Reserved.

Any views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and/or participants and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of EP Lab Digest or HMP Global, their employees, and affiliates. 

In this interview, EP Lab Digest speaks with Jennifer N Avari Silva, MD, FHRS, Executive Producer, and Suneet Mittal, MD, FHRS, about what to expect at the upcoming conference, taking place September 5-7, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. 

HRX is now in its third year, congratulations! How does the integration of such a diverse range of stakeholders from across the cardiovascular and digital health sectors contribute to addressing the challenges of digital health?

Jennifer Silva, MD, FHRS: The main value proposition of a meeting like HRX is to bring together all those stakeholders and have them all in the same room. As you well know, the format for HRX is that it is in a single room, so everybody has the opportunity to meet, interact, and mingle with new people. This allows people that are thinking about creating and building new technologies to talk to people across the lifespan of that technology, from the developers, to the engineers, to the test engineers, to the clinical end users, to the regulatory people, to intellectual property, all those people are all in the same room. So, I think that is the most exciting part of HRX. How about you, Suneet? 

Suneet Mittal, MD, FHRS: Yes, I could not agree more, but I would also state that the meeting is more than just about digital health. It is really about innovation. Innovation has been really the lifeblood of electrophysiologists and the cardiovascular community for some time. Obviously, digital health is a very strong aspect of it, but there are so many other areas in our daily ecosystem that speak to innovation. What we are really focusing in on is everything short of the commercialized product that is there. We want to take people from the time they generate their idea all the way to what it takes to get to a commercialized product and do so in the context of discussion with the true experts, whether they are from industry or our peers from professional societies.

Tell us about some of the notable speakers at this year's HRX conference, including some of the featured content for allied professionals.

Jennifer Silva, MD, FHRS: That is a really good question. There are a lot of speakers I am interested in hearing from this year. A couple that I will mention as part of a broad overview, is that in addition to having the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) present—and the FDA has been wonderful partners to HRX and to the meeting and attendees in general—we also this year are excited to have the National Institutes of Health, specifically the group from their small business team, as well as the US Patent and Trademark Office present to talk to people who are in the early stages of ideation and what is their novel, creative, original idea. product. Thinking all the way to the other end of the spectrum, we are excited this year to have several venture capitalists and others who are engaged on the finance side to discuss how to financially take an idea from idea generation through to an FDA-cleared or FDA marketable product. So, I think we are touching that whole spectrum this year, and I am pretty excited to see these people all together in the same room.

Suneet Mittal, MD, FHRS: Yes, I am really excited as well. I think that on the one end, we have some amazing keynote type of speakers, people who are speaking to the core of this meeting. For example, Chris Mansi is a neurosurgeon turned entrepreneur who is leading Viz.ai and the way we can bring a lot of artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives to the cardiovascular space. Maria Berkman is a venture capitalist who will be discussing how to invest in this space. John Halamka will be discussing his perspective from the standpoint of a health care system like the Mayo Clinic and how these things really fit in. On the other end, in addition to the sessions that Jennifer just mentioned, I am excited about sessions such as one on how old tools in electrophysiology are being repurposed. We have one session that I am passionate about looking at how the electrocardiogram, stethoscope, and echocardiogram, which are really considered the “bread and butter” of cardiology is being transformed in the era of AI, and how we need to think differently about things that have been used for decades and decades and even centuries in the cardiovascular space. 

Jennifer Silva, MD, FHRS: To add to that, this is the first year we are going to have cosponsored sessions. So, we are going to have a cosponsored session with the Society for Cardiac Robotic Navigation. I just hopped off a call with them, and I am excited to hear what they are going to be talking about this year. We also have a cosponsored session with the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance. There is a lot that we can learn from our colleagues who are working in the imaging space. So again, these are more opportunities for that intersectionality that you get when putting various stakeholders in a single room.

We certainly have a varied audience. Some sessions will exclusively have allied professionals (APs) on the stage. Most of the sessions will have a mix. I do not think we have any sessions that are only physicians. We have topics that engage APs as the critical part of the care team that they are, and also in how APs are important drivers of innovation, particularly in the care delivery of innovation. So, I am excited to see and learn from them as they talk to us about things that they have learned on their paths, including what they have tried that did not work.

Suneet Mittal, MD, FHRS: I should add that there are a lot of entrepreneurs within our AP cohort. Many have started companies at this point or are working in industry. We have a number of sessions where they talk about their journey and how they have made a career pivot to these other forms of health care delivery. I think a lot of people who have similar interests will have a lot to learn from their shared experiences.

What are some of the strategies that will be explored at HRX 2024 that attendees can apply to their own clinical practice?

Jennifer Silva, MD, FHRS: That is a great question. I wish I knew the answer. But I think that is what is exciting about the meeting. One of the themes this year that we really wanted to focus on was how do you implement innovations into your clinical practice. I think that is something we are all trying to figure out. I certainly am struggling with that. Some things we have implemented that have been incredibly and wildly successful, and other things not so much. So, this is a real opportunity to learn from the people who are creating these new tools and have implemented these tools from all the stakeholders. I am not sure what people are going to take away. I am pretty curious myself. 

Suneet Mittal, MD, FHRS: Yes, I agree, we are still early in this process. But we have pivoted from identifying problems to starting to discuss the solutions that are necessary to have those major breakthroughs. It is a new way of thinking about things, evaluating things, implementing them in clinical practice. I think many of us have the same struggles, and we hope to leave the meeting with thought processes on how to move forward so we can implement those changes in clinical practice sooner than later.

For more information, please visit https://experiencehrx.com.

The transcripts have been edited for clarity and length.