The use of telehealth services in rural America has become a popular practice since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But what else can telehealth address in rural healthcare? Long before the pandemic, one cardiologist sought to see what impact telehealth could have on those suffering from undiagnosed cardiac illnesses in rural areas. This week we are talking with Dr. Ami Bhatt, the Chief Innovation Officer of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Bhatt will discuss the challenges of providing cardiac care in rural areas along with her pioneering efforts in Telehealth.
“We do thought leadership in getting people to understand that digital health is here, it is helpful and it’s necessary.”
-Dr. Ami Bhatt
Ami B. Bhatt, MD, FACC, is the chief innovation officer (CIO) at the American College of Cardiology and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her interest in digital health strategy and the digital transformation of the cardiovascular field stems from the belief that state-of-the-art, personalized care can be delivered to individuals in the community, empowering patients and creating stronger clinician-patient partnerships for sustainable health outcomes. The ACC Innovation Program has a robust platform to transform digital patient care and advance technologies that are reshaping medicine.
Dr. Bhatt has 20 years of experience as a clinician, investigator, and educator with nearly 10 years of experience in telemedicine and digital health. She founded her first program in cardiovascular virtual care in 2013 and continues to work on creating culturally relevant personalized virtual cardiovascular care delivery models. Her research has centered on identifying and implementing solutions to overcoming access barriers to cardiovascular and telemedicine care.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Medicine, Bhatt completed her medicine and pediatrics residency at Harvard, her adult cardiology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and her adult congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension fellowship at the Boston Children’s Hospital. She was the inaugural Richard Liberthson Endowed Scholar in Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) at the Massachusetts General Hospital while Director of their ACHD program. She most recently served as the director of Outpatient and Telecardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Corrigan-Minehan Heart Center. Dr. Bhatt is now co-leading the inaugural year of the MGH Elevate Leadership Program aimed at transforming leaders for tomorrow’s healthcare challenges. As part of MGH Elevate, Dr. Bhatt is focused on fostering agility, communication, and creativity to develop the next generation of impactful leaders in medicine.