Age: 39
Occupation: Clinical Associate Professor, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary; Cardiologist, Alberta Health Services
In medical school, Robert Miller became captivated by the mechanics of cardiology. But he also had a personal stake. “My family was impacted by heart disease, and I wanted to make sure other people weren’t impacted in the same way,” he says.
Today, as a cardiologist, Miller splits his time between treating patients with heart disease, conducting research and advocating for funding. He also runs the Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT programs at Foothills Medical Centre and South Health Campus, where he has doubled the volume of CT scans, providing greater patient access.
As an award-winning expert in advanced cardiac imaging, Miller has an impressive publication record of 170-plus peer-reviewed manuscripts. His research lab focuses on clinical applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve diagnosis and risk assessment through non-invasive imaging, for which he was recently awarded a half-million-dollar Alberta Innovates grant.
A clinical challenge Miller is solving is deciding whether to send patients for a cardiac CT scan versus an angiogram. CT scans are less invasive with less radiation, meaning lower risk and cost, while angiograms are the gold standard for patients with multiple heart blockages. But, because it’s difficult to tell if someone has many blockages, it’s not obvious which test to apply.
So, Miller’s lab is developing two AI models using patients’ medical histories to help predict if they have significant coronary disease — critical work that positions Calgary as an AI leader in Canada’s nuclear cardiology space.
With such information, doctors can make more informed testing decisions more efficiently. “Right now, it depends on the physician’s feel and gut instinct, which is imperfect, compared to if you’re able to consider all of the potentially relevant patient factors,” Miller says. “The goal of our lab is to find these clinical situations where we need decision support, and use AI to provide that support for improved patient care.”
Thank yous
“My family for all their support.”
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