What has been the greatest challenge during your professional career?
I think if I were to say the biggest challenge I have is how to prioritize things and then work on a few tasks and not try to do too many at once. I think for me personally, that has been the biggest challenge and then how to keep a balance between medicine and life outside of it.
What area of research in cardiometabolic health interests you most now and why?
In the cardiometabolic space, most of my work has been in lipids, and I look at it from a little bit of different perspective rather than the therapeutic side of things. I obviously am quite involved in the therapeutic side, being part of the guidelines on how therapeutics should be used when it comes to lipids. But the other side of it where our team makes a contribution, is looking at it from a healthcare systems perspective using big data, as to what is the impact of new therapies and how are we doing in terms of delivering therapies that we know work in our patients. Being a cardiologist at the VA has been great because VA has one of the strongest informatics platforms in terms of a healthcare system. The availability of big data, being able to work with great teams, and having had the opportunity to be mentored by some of the best in the field greatly facilitates this approach. This is an important area of focus for me, how can big data guide and inform us in terms of where we are, what we know and where we can go with the new therapeutics that are being developed.
