HRS Past, Present and Future—Innovators at Heart

Interview With Patricia Blake, FASAE, CAE, Chief Executive Officer, Heart Rhythm Society

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Patricia Blake, FASAE, CAE, discusses her upcoming presentation at Western AF, including opportunities for the Heart Rhythm Society to support innovation in the EP field and how to foster collaboration in the EP community.

What will you be discussing at the Western AF Symposium 2025? 

I am Pat Blake, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS). I've been a medical professional association CEO for over 25 years and have been in the field for longer than that. I've had the opportunity to work with emergency room nurses and gastroenterology physicians, and now I get to work with electrophysiologists, allied professionals, and research professionals as well. I've been with HRS for a little over 6 years and it has been delightful.

At Western AF every year, all of us as faculty are given a specific topic and area that rounds out the agenda. This year, I was asked to talk about HRS's role in innovation. The title of my talk is “Innovation, Past, Present, and Future—Innovators at Heart.” That is one of our taglines now, and we'll talk a little more soon about why that is.

What do you see as the most significant opportunities for the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) to support innovation in the field of cardiac electrophysiology (EP) over the next few years? How can HRS help EP professionals navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of new technologies and therapies?

Let's first go back a little and talk about the field of EP. In 1979, the North American Society for Pacing and Electrophysiology (NASPE) was formed. It is now HRS, but that was the world's first EP society. That in and of itself was a very innovative thing to do. A small subspecialty at the time, they decided to form their own organization and go their own way. I say that because innovation is really part of the DNA of electrophysiologists, and we see that in many different ways. One of the ways is that, as we know, the EP community works very closely with industry to develop new products, devices, and procedures. It's a rapidly evolving technology and has been for years. Our physicians and clinicians are at the forefront of innovation in many ways. How does a medical society support innovation, care about it, and talk about it? What is interesting is that when you think about innovation, how it is defined is also very curious. I would've thought it would be a simple thing to define, but as you start talking with people about innovation, you find that there are many different ways that people think about it. For example, they think about innovation as a new invention; that is a very common thing. But people also think about innovation in terms of how things are done. We look at innovation in terms of innovative research. So, our job as a medical professional association is to convene. That's what we do the very best. In 1979, when NASPE was formed, the first thing they did was produce an annual meeting. Why is that? Because we convene, and what we convene are stakeholders. The stakeholders then have an opportunity to talk, think, argue, and debate. That is how innovation is born in many ways. So, we continue that through the years. Again, that is part of our DNA and how we support that primarily, but it really is by making sure the right people are talking to each other all the time.

How does HRS foster collaboration between emerging innovators, established leaders, and the broader EP community?

In 2023, the HRS Board of Trustees designed their most recent strategic plan. This is a process that is done every 3 to 4 years, as with most professional organizations. What has typically been one of the pillars, as we call them in strategic planning, is the advocate for EP. That is very important, how we advocate and what we advocate for. Advancing knowledge is another pillar; education is at the core of what HRS does, and advancing knowledge is critical. In 2023, in this last strategic plan, the third pillar that was developed is called drive innovation. This is because although the board recognized that though we were doing that in many different ways, it wasn't organized. There wasn't staff and volunteer focus on that area. It was time that HRS looked at not only convening people, but figuring out how we could actually drive innovation. Since then, we developed an innovation brand called HRX. We created an annual meeting and are about ready to head into our fourth one, called HRX Live. If you think about an innovation cycle, a simple explanation is there is invention, translation, and commercialization. The annual meetings for HRS, our scientific sessions that have been held since 1979, are the commercialization piece of an innovation cycle. But what we realized is that HRS wasn't doing a lot with the invention and translational pieces of this innovation cycle. So, HRX Live was designed to really look at the innovation and translational pieces. We call it an “unconventional” meeting because not only is the content an intention around innovation, but the meeting design itself is innovative. It's all in one room. We use headsets. It's a very interesting design, and that's partly because form follows function. If we're going to be innovative in our topics, we need to be innovative in how we present them. So, it's an interesting way of thinking. Again, as we talked about definitions of innovation, there is a lot of those, so some of it is how to present things. How do you get people to think differently?

Going back to who we've convened, one of the things that's most advantageous for our HRX brand is that industry can be true partners. These are non-CME activities. This is the way that we are able to be shoulder to shoulder—the physicians, allied professionals, basic scientists, researchers, and industry partners—working together on these things. All of us are trying to improve patient care—that is the goal for everyone in that room. What are the different pieces and parts to that? We have venture capitalists there. We do pitch competitions. We do all different kinds of things to try to have these people match up and meet. We do one-on-one conversations and hold a lot of roundtables. It's all designed to put the right people in the same room at the same time.

The transcripts were edited for clarity and length.