Dr Andrew Krahn, President, Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), discusses the upcoming Heart Rhythm 2023 meeting (May 19-21, 2023, New Orleans, LA, USA), and the HRX 2023 conference (September 21-23, 2023, in Seattle, WA, USA) hosted by the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the care of patients with heart rhythm disorders through education, research, and advocacy.
Heart Rhythm 2023 aims to bring together experts globally to share and present the latest research and advancements in the field of cardiac arrhythmia. The event will feature presentations, workshops, and discussions covering topics such as diagnosis, treatment, and management of arrhythmias, as well as cutting-edge technologies and therapies.
HRX 2023 focuses on the latest advances in digital healthcare, technology, and innovation in the field of cardiovascular digital health. The event will include keynote speakers, interactive sessions, and networking opportunities for healthcare professionals, researchers, and industry leaders to discuss emerging trends and share best practices, and will provide an immersive, interactive and diverse experience in the latest advances in arrhythmia care.
Access more content from Dr Andrew Krahn highlighting updates from the Heart Rhythm Society
Questions:
- What is the focus and theme of this year’s Heart Rhythm and HRX conferences? (0:16)
- What are the most anticipated presentations of this year’s Heart Rhythm and HRX conferences? (3:09)
Disclosures: Andrew Krahn has nothing to disclose in relation to this video.
Support: Interview and filming supported by Touch Medical Media. Interview conducted by Katey Gabrysch.
Transcript
Hi my name is Andrew Krahn and the President of the Heart Rhythm Society. I’m an electrophysiologist or heart rhythm specialist from Vancouver in Canada, and it’s good to be here today.
What is the focus and theme of this year’s Heart Rhythm and HRX conferences?
As you know, we are the big event of the year. We think it’s the largest gathering globally around the world. And this year our focus is science and innovation. We’re pretty excited about this. We think it’s in fact, science and innovation that really is the hands and feet of improving patient outcomes, groundbreaking ideas, new technologies, lifesaving therapies. And our slogan, our way of thinking about this touch phrase is bringing the world of EP together. We think that’s exciting because we are really moving towards restoring that in-person electricity that happens around the community coming together in person.
At this stage, the numbers so far in terms of registration for our May meeting, things are looking very encouraging from the standpoint of resuming back to where we were before the pandemic with numbers that reflect the 2019 numbers, which were very strong in terms of in-person attendance. This is really great news for us that it’s really coming together in this way.
At our other meeting that was new to last year (2022) that we were also very excited about is HRX and we’re also grateful for your interest in that. This year it’ll be in Seattle in mid-September and the team there is innovators at heart. The really interesting thing about this meeting is the scope of this meeting is intended to be smaller, more intimate, more exchange oriented, and that kind of innovation theme is something that we’re trying to bring out. The Heart Rhythm Society was actually founded 44 years agon and 44 years ago, it was called NASPI at the time, and this was really a bunch of innovators and inventors who had, an electrical perspective with electrophysiologists. This formed the North American society that then grew into something that was more of an international focus.
Our focus this year is bringing all these digital health focused innovation and innovators and stakeholders together, and we’re excited about that. All stakeholders are clinicians, engineers, investors, regulators, entrepreneurs, all of these kinds of people. This is something that’s really further out because we have a much longer runway to get to the full details of the meeting, but we’re very excited about where it’s going. So hopefully that gives you a sense of the imminent meeting, which is really on track to rock and roll and our innovation meeting that’s coming up in September, that we’re excited about getting to this innovator type of mindset with the different community.
What are the most anticipated presentations of this year’s Heart Rhythm and HRX conferences?
Over the years, we have really found late breaking clinical trials are they are the staple of the buzz, the innovation, where people are crowded, where it’s hard to find a seat, and over the last 70 years, we’ve seen gradual growth in applications and submissions for late breakers. This year, in fact, we’re up 40%, which is remarkable and by far the most we’ve ever had. This is known, this is an embarrassment of riches from the standpoint of all of the innovation and science that’s come forward. People think there’s things that are really practice changing. Along with late breaking clinical trials, which is the largest draw in terms of people attending a session, we had over 2,500 abstracts, a 24% increase. We also have, 15, 100 different presentations. Our posters are moving to, if you like, a little retro go back to actual paper posters on boards so that there’s that interpersonal exchange that happens as you walk through with the presenters and so on. There are 11 different categories for people, tracks that people can follow throughout the meeting with if they have a focused interest or a particular professional perspective, so we’re pretty excited about that.
I can give you my picks and what I think is the most exciting of the areas are sessions that are most exciting. I have my top five. My top five are cardiac arrest in athletes. That’s obviously topical given some of the events that have happened recently and our areas of interest in that. Gene therapy has gone from space age to today and their science coming out in that space that we’re working on already. AI and machine learning is another obvious one where it can take us a long way and there’s so much innovation going on in that space. It’s incredible. A theme that has a major impact on our profession is this idea of moving ablation upstream and disease processes for atrial fibrillation and VT, and an immense amount of data and policy and strategies for implementing that kind of science in our healthcare system. The other is this whole device related idea of innovations where we’re seeing systems with new leads, new structures, new formats for devices, systems with no leads, systems with all kinds of new characteristics that are really changing the face of the traditional sort of pacemaker ICD environment that we live in.
In terms of your picks or our two-program chair and abstract chair, Ken Ellenbogen and Mina Chang have their top sessions there on our website at heartrhythm.com, those are their perspective on what they think is most exciting. I think the next thing is HRX there is a lot more planning yet to be finalized for this, and a very exciting new website in that space, and we’re looking for abstracts in that space also that are innovation. We’re going to have a pitch competition, which was really fun last year as we have a number of different things. I found the pitch competition the most enjoyable in terms of the really young individuals there and it was really transformative upstart ideas. The new website is https://experiencehrx.com, and that’s a place to go to sort of see what’s happening and there’s a lot of dynamic content in there.
