Dr John Rumsfeld Outlines ACC's Main Goals for the Future of Cardiology

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) is entering into novel digital health partnerships to innovate cardiology care and improve cardiovascular health, explained John Rumsfeld, MD, PhD, chief innovation officer at the ACC.

Transcript (slightly modified)

As the chief innovation officer of the American College of Cardiology, what is your main goal for the future of cardiovascular health, and how can ACC help achieve it?

The ACC has, for the last 20 months or so, taken on a brand new and very ambitious innovation program. I emphasize that it’s not just a single entity, it’s not just a committee, it actually is a full-blown commitment by the organization to design and execute an innovation strategy.

Now, cardiology in general is a high-tech field, and we tend to adopt new things, like new medications or new devices, when they have evidence and they’re in the guidelines. But, what we are really focusing on here is the transformation of healthcare. The ACC’s mission is simply to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health. That’s the innovation agenda goal—transform care and improve health outcomes and they're health outcomes, that’s including an emphasis on the word health. To do that, we think the best place to focus our attention in this innovation agenda is on digital health, on healthcare analytics with evolving data sources, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. Also, on precision health, which I think is a confusing term to some people—but what we mean is more tailored therapies based on the best available data and some new technologies that are evolving applied either to individual patients, but also it could be useful for population health management.

So, taking this a step further, the ACC is actually working on professional development of members who have an interest in the areas of digital health and in data science and in health technology, but we are also seeking novel partnerships for the very first time with the technology sector. This goes all the way from entrepreneurs and startup companies, all the way up to the well-known large tech companies that everyone knows the brands of. We are actually entering into some very novel partnerships including designing digital health solutions from scratch, where cardiologists, our own members, are having direct input on what those look like.