Making a Difference for Heart Attack Patients: Matthew Shields Fine Tunes Stent Accessibility

After Matt Shields experienced a heart attack during his daily run in 2016, he decided to change the world as much as that morning changed him. This podcast explores his inspiring effort to improve the process of stent manufacturing and deliverability. Listeners will hear

• How he experienced a heart attack at age 40 despite years participating in performance sports like running and cycling exercise,
• Why he turned to collecting data about stent manufacturing after getting one of his own implanted, and
• What his new software tracking stent usage hopes to accomplish for the industry.

Matthew Shields works for CSRIO, Australia's national research science agency. He'd spent years supporting telescope systems by creating an efficient tracking system for telescope parts. But after his heart attack in 2016 during a winter morning run, he recalibrated his job focus toward making a difference for patients and doctors working on heart health. His long recovery gave him time to think, and this combined with the realization of the importance of the timing of the stent implant he received helped point to this new path. He understood that to make a difference on a global scale, he could energize and streamline the stent manufacturing process, which was filled with missing links and inefficient trends.

His software tracks stents through the supply chain and utilizes metrics like delivery time from the factory, where parts are made, and how the supply chain of raw materials functions. As they "cascade down this waterfall," he says that by the time they end up in Australia, the stents might have been damaged and there's no way to really return them or even trace their origin. From his personal experience, he knows how important a stent's availability is and how vital is it is for various stakeholders to be aware of correct supply location and amount. By creating a dialog around the parts transfer at a granular level as well as the deliveries, he hopes to correct inconsistences, inefficiencies, and redundancies. In addition to this work, he is involved in exercise and sports cardiology, reaching out to those who are both heart patients and sports enthusiasts.

For more about his sports cardiology work, see his website: epichearts.com.au. For more about the software he's working on, see the CSRIO web page. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK