The Academy of Elite Doctors exists to move cardiovascular practice forward, and research is the mechanism by which that happens. This page sets out the research programme open to Academy members: the questions we are working on, the support available to members who want to publish, and how to bring a project to the Academy.

Where the Academy concentrates its research effort

Rather than spreading thinly across all of cardiovascular medicine, the Academy concentrates member-led work in areas where practice in South Asia and other emerging healthcare systems diverges most sharply from the evidence base generated in North America and Western Europe.

  • Access and time-to-treatment in acute coronary syndromes. Door-to-balloon and first-medical-contact-to-device times outside tertiary centres, hub-and-spoke pharmaco-invasive pathways, and the real cost of delay.
  • Antithrombotic strategy in bleeding-prone populations. DAPT and DAT duration decisions where HAS-BLED scores run high, where PRU testing is unavailable, and where anti-Xa monitoring is not routinely accessible.
  • Structural and valvular intervention in resource-constrained settings. Case selection, imaging protocols and follow-up in centres without on-site cardiac surgery.
  • Heart failure care pathways. Guideline-directed medical therapy uptake, titration in outpatient practice, and the gap between trial protocols and clinic reality.
  • Preventive and metabolic cardiology. Lipid target attainment, the cardiometabolic effects of newer agents, and primary prevention in populations with early-onset coronary disease.
  • Clinical education research. How cardiology is taught and examined, and which teaching formats actually change practice.

What the Academy provides to member researchers

Most clinicians who want to publish do not lack ideas. They lack protocol design support, statistical help, and an unhurried critical reader before submission. The Academy provides all three.

  • Protocol review. A structured read of your research question, design, sample size assumptions and endpoints before you begin collecting data, when changes are still cheap.
  • Statistical support. Guidance on analysis planning, handling of missing data, and the presentation of results in a form reviewers accept.
  • Ethics and governance guidance. Help preparing institutional ethics committee submissions, consent documentation, and trial or study registration.
  • Manuscript critique. A pre-submission read from a senior reviewer, focused on the reasoning and the discussion rather than on language alone.
  • Journal targeting. Honest advice on where a piece of work realistically belongs, which saves months of sequential rejection.

Collaborative and multi-centre work

Single-centre series answer a limited set of questions. The Academy’s registry and multi-centre projects allow members in different cities and countries to contribute cases to a shared dataset under one protocol, with authorship allocated transparently at the outset. Members who contribute a defined minimum number of cases are named collaborators; those who take on protocol, analysis or writing responsibilities take substantive authorship positions.

Research integrity

The Academy holds its members to the ICMJE authorship criteria and to full declaration of conflicts of interest. Ghost authorship, gift authorship, duplicate submission and the use of predatory journals are incompatible with Academy membership. Any project supported by the Academy must have institutional ethics approval, or a documented exemption, before the first patient record is examined.

Bringing a project to the Academy

Start with a one-page outline: the clinical question, why it matters, the population you can realistically access, and what you already have. Send it through the contact page and it will be routed to a reviewer working in that area. Academy members receive priority review; if you are not yet a member, you can join the Academy first.

Research and teaching feed each other here. Work that begins as a research question often ends up in the interesting cases library, in the Academy’s course programme, or in the Academy reading list. Members whose research makes a sustained contribution are eligible for the Academy’s annual awards and for Scholar of the Year.