Dr. Ami Bhatt on Overcoming Challenges in Digital Health Innovation to Improve Patient Care

The HealthTech influencer and chief innovation officer of the American College of Cardiology shares how technology can improve patient outcomes and access to care. Digital health tools can make healthcare more accessible to patients in medical deserts or who have difficulty attending in-person appointments. They can also help physicians identify risk factors for disease early and provide preventative care. Healthcare technology can empower and engage patients while supporting clinicians, but it must be implemented with intentionality to ensure patient and community needs are met equitably. Dr. Ami Bhatt is chief innovation officer at the American College of Cardiology, director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program, and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is as a longtime advocate for digital health solutions and co-hosts the MedTech Insights podcast, which features discussions with digital health leaders.

Throughout her career, Bhatt has sought to care for patients where they are, leading to a passion for telehealth and digital health. One of HealthTech’s 30 healthcare IT influencers worth a follow, Bhatt spoke about the challenges of the digital health landscape today and how healthcare organizations can improve patient outcomes, experiences, access and equity. Even before then, here was a day at Yale University when I was in med school on the pediatric cardiology service, when we were called urgently to the adult service at Yale Med, which isn’t usual. The way I picture it, we walked in with long white coats flapping in the breeze, arriving on the adult floor to help an adult with congenital heart disease. This patient was born a blue baby but had now grown past age 18. Then, we were just transitioning from having more kids with congenital heart disease to them doing so well in pediatrics that we had more adults with congenital heart disease. That became a love of mine. I chose to use my medicine and pediatrics career then to further train in cardiology and specifically take care of this population.