The American College of Cardiology, a 39,000-member non-profit professional medical society and teaching institution, is the leading organization dedicated to advocating for quality cardiovascular care- through education, research promotion, development and application of standards and guidelines- and to influence health care and policy. The ACC Adult Congenital and Paediatric Cardiology Section will expand its participation in congenital disease by partnering with the Health-e-Child to facilitate dissemination of Health-e-Child technology and tools to the US congenital heart disease community. The US migration will be initiated through the long-standing partnership with Johns Hopkins University.
This provides the Sim-e-Child project with a unique opportunity to harness the clinical data assets available in two ongoing multicenter clinical trials with the power of the Health-e-Child framework to approach clinical care in children in new way. This data will be used at JHU to validate the models which are being developed in the Health-e-Child project. Additionally, the ACC will work with the hospitals to define the clinical assessment procedure for validating the heart models and their extensions. Through its extensive US network, the ACC is uniquely positioned to build knowledge bridges between the EU’s VPH and clinical communities and their US counterparts as a step in this direction after the validation work is complete access to Health-e-Child models will be disseminated to the US clinical Paediatric Cardiology communities via the Sim-e-Child portal. In addition to this work the Dr. Gerard Martin, Chief of Cardiology at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC and chair of the NCDR IMPACT Steering Committee will also head the consortiums Ethical & Legal committee.
Finally, another critical outcome of this partnership project is the ability to begin merging the data structure for cardiovascular databases to increase interoperability and facilitate European and United States collaborative efforts. The ACC has a significant presence in the global cardiovascular community with 3600 members outside of the United States and involved in a number of international efforts for education as well as research. This project would further international relations amongst cardiovascular professionals and foster good will between cardiovascular societies. The ACC will lead the effort to bring the Health-e-Child to the US beginning with the Helen B. Taussig Congenital Heart Center at JHU and support the alignment and validation efforts in WP3 and WP5. Through its wide network the ACC is in unique position to disseminate information on Sim-e-Child and create further opportunities to expand the Health-e-Child network.
