IMPROVE-PVI Pilot

Jeff Healey

Senior Scientist

Jeff Healey is a Cardiologist/Electrophysiologist and Professor of Medicine at McMaster University.  He is Yusuf Chair and Director of Cardiology at McMaster University. He is the chair of the Canadian Stroke Prevention and Intervention Network (CSPIN) and past chair of the Canadian Atrial Fibrillation guidelines committee. He is also on the steering committee of the international AF Screen organization.

Healey was the lead author of the ASSERT trial that demonstrated the increased stroke risk associated with sub-clinical atrial fibrillation (New England Journal of Medicine 2012), and the principal investigator of the ARTESIA trial, which demonstrated that anticoagulation with apixaban reduced the risk of stroke in patients with sub-clinical atrial fibrillation New England Journal of Medicine 2023). He is also the principal investigator of the LAAOS-4 trial, evaluating the role of left atrial appendage occlusion on top of NOAC therapy for prevention of stroke in high-risk individuals with atrial fibrillation.

Stuart Connolly

Stuart Connolly is a Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and a cardiac electrophysiologist at Hamilton Health Sciences. He became a faculty member at McMaster University in 1983 and was awarded a full professorship in 1994. He was also appointed as the inaugural holder of the Salim Yusuf Chair in Cardiology at McMaster University.

He has published more than 270 scientific articles in the field, and is currently a member of the editorial boards for a number of prominent cardiology journals, including Heart, the American Heart Journal and the Journal of Pacing and Electrophysiology. His main research interests are focused on the evaluation of treatments for heart rhythm disorders. His academic career has been largely devoted to the design and execution of controlled clinical trials in this area.

He holds a Masters degree from Fordham University, New York, and an MD from McGill University in Montreal. He received his specialist training in cardiology at the University of Toronto and at Stanford University.

Alexander Benz

PHRI International Fellow

Alexander Benz joined the Arrhythmia Research group at PHRI, supervised by Stuart Connolly, as a research fellow in January 2019, and is enrolled in the Health Research Methodology program at McMaster University. His primary research interest is clinical electrophysiology, with a particular focus on atrial fibrillation. Other areas of interest include oral anticoagulation in various settings, inflammation, cardiac implantable electronic devices and interventions such as catheter ablation.

He is actively involved in the conduct of large international clinical trials coordinated at PHRI. Alexander is the Principal Investigator of a randomized clinical trial testing a short-course treatment with colchicine in the setting of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation that started enrollment in January 2020.

Alexander obtained his medical degree from Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany) in 2015. He is pursuing a career in Cardiology.

Jessica Tyrwhitt

Program Manager

Jessica Tyrwhitt has more than 10 years’ experience in coordinating and managing large, international clinical trials. She oversees interventional trials, registries, and observational research studies looking at primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease in a variety of therapeutic areas, including cardiology, thrombosis, nephrology, cardio-oncology and diabetes.

She holds an Honours Bachelor of Science Degree & Business from the University of Waterloo.