It is my great honor to serve as President of the American College of Cardiology this year. I stand on the shoulders of giants who have come before me and who have served with honor and distinction.

This past year has been one of extraordinary circumstances. As health care professionals, we have worked under intense pressure with great demands placed on us both in our professions and in our personal lives.

We have had to deal with feelings of uncertainty and chaos. We probably all have many stories that we can share – stories of resilience, empathy and adaptability. Today we see rays of hope as we disseminate the vaccine and we see 2021 not just as the 71st anniversary year of the founding of the American College of Cardiology, but as a year of renewal and reconnection.

Each year, we celebrate the time-honored tradition of Convocation, a ceremony of tradition, transition and promise.

As President of the ACC, it is my distinct pleasure and privilege to "Welcome" all the new Fellows and Associates to the ACC family. Congratulations and best wishes to all of you!

I would also like to be among the first to congratulate our outstanding award winners from around the world and recognize their many accomplishments. Thank you also to all our global cardiovascular society partners for your support and friendship.

I also want to express my gratitude to the ACC Board of Trustees, Board of Governors, Assembly of International Governors and Member Sections for their service and support. And thank you to each and every ACC member for your resilience and patience through these difficult times.

Additionally, I would like to extend a special heartfelt thank you to outgoing ACC President Athena Poppas for her leadership, professionalism and friendship as we navigated an unprecedented time in our history in 2020. I also want to make note of this historic transition from one woman leader to another – the first in our ACC history!

In addition, I want to welcome our new CEO, Cathy Gates, who is leading our most amazing ACC staff. I look forward to working with them all.

This past year has also taught us about gratitude. I would like to acknowledge and thank the many teachers, mentors, colleagues, and friends who have encouraged me, guided me, and supported and helped me in my career and on my journey to becoming the President of ACC. Their skills and commitment to excellence has been inspirational and I am grateful and under their guidance, I have developed as a clinician and as an educator.

I would like to say a special thank you to Rick Chazal for starting me on this journey and to my dear friends Thad Waites and Lianna Collinge for their unconditional support and wisdom.

I am a proud American of South Asian descent, an Indian American. This fact is another historic first for the ACC.  I am blessed with an amazing, supportive family – my parents will be celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary this year. They taught me about hard work, commitment, resilience, compassion and service and to always soar high and far. My amazing sister always reminds me about the positive and good in the world. To my wonderful husband, a gastroenterologist, I want to say thank you for being my rock, my constant source of support and encouragement

With optimism in the air, 2021 will be a year of transition as we begin to emerge from pandemic life and define a new normal.  What the post-pandemic world will look like remains to be seen, but I believe we have a real opportunity to prove ourselves as leaders and apply the lessons we have learned this past year to achieve our Vision of a world where innovation and knowledge optimize cardiovascular care and outcomes.

The cardiovascular community has had a long history of being among the first to leverage innovative new technologies and therapies. We have been at the forefront in research, guideline development, and best practices for transforming care. These strengths have been put to the test throughout the pandemic and have proven vital to our ability to quickly adapt to provide the best care possible to patients based on the latest evidence.

In particular, we saw tremendous growth in digitization and the use of digital platforms to connect with each other and continue to share best practices, latest research, and clinical guidance – not just regarding COVID-19, but other critical areas of cardiovascular care as well.

These same platforms have also been utilized to provide ongoing patient care in the absence of in-person visits. While we still have much to learn, the large-scale deployment of telehealth over the past year was truly one of our great success stories.

This first attempt at digital transformation has shown us areas within our internal systems that need to transform for the College to deliver actionable knowledge. Other areas of importance that we need to focus on are the external components of robust engagement and development of our virtual care, remote patient monitoring and artificial intelligence platforms.

Many industries including banking and entertainment have undergone digital transformation. Medicine is a more complex system, moving only with evidence; hence it has taken longer with its attempts at digital transformation. 

Our experience with electronic health record made us weary – but I would say that this was not digital transformation. Digital transformation done right should make our lives better; it should make our lives easier. It should take away tasks or at the very least, make our tasks simpler. It may be the real solution for clinician wellness and may also be the key for achieving health equity.

Health equity has been an aspirational goal of the ACC for many years but has not yet been actualized. With the formation of the Health Equity Taskforce this past year, we are poised to create a culture of health equity in cardiovascular medicine and eliminate disparities by ensuring equitable cardiovascular care for all.

We must be prepared as a profession to embrace and move to center stage our solutions and vision of digital transformation and health equity. If we don't help craft the solutions, who will? Tech companies and engineers are looking for our clinical expertise to help usher in meaningful digital solutions. Our patients are counting on us for these solutions.

We also have several other strategic priorities that will require our attention over the next year as we work to deliver on our Mission and Vision. We will need to continue to optimize our clinical guidelines while developing robust clinical guidance tools. The structure for this has been laid down; we must guide it expertly to see the desired results. Additionally, we must focus on one of our treasured assets – NCDR registries. We need to nurture and further enhance the NCDR so as to take full advantage of its capabilities.

On a broader scale, we experienced first-hand how biology could meet technology with the COVID-19 genome being sequenced in a matter of weeks, and multiple vaccines being rolled out in less than a year. While urgency created the momentum, this allowed us to see how divergent capabilities can come together. As Plato said: "Necessity is the mother of invention."

Given the rapidness of change we are undergoing as a society, as health care professionals and caregivers, the key to success will be to learn to adjust and adapt. The ground rules, beliefs and assumptions that drive health care culture will require rethinking and a new mindset will be required to propel us to our future success. I firmly believe that the ACC and its more than 54,000 members around the world are in the best place to help drive this change and advance solutions for success.

As President, my hope for and my challenge to all ACC members for the next year and beyond is to not lose sight of our strengths or the sense of community that has grown out of our shared vulnerabilities and our shared sense of purpose to find solutions for ourselves, our patients, and our communities.

Over the next year, I urge all of us to focus on these strengths and lessons learned. I urge all of us not to become complacent, but rather hone our strengths further so that when we emerge post-COVID-19, we will be stronger, more focused, and more united around our shared Mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health.

More than ever, let's come together as one cardiovascular community. There is a need for emotional connectivity after a year of social isolation and social distancing. Our mental health and well-being ought to be a priority for all of us. We cannot help others without taking care of ourselves. This year, let us embark on cherishing our moments, sharing our stories, and working together as a strong, global cardiovascular community.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.

Thus, let's chart the next 70 years of cardiovascular care delivery, as we have always done stronger together.

Clinical Topics: COVID-19 Hub

Keywords: ACC Annual Scientific Session, ACC21, Electronic Health Records, Artificial Intelligence, COVID-19, Telemedicine

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