The nominees were evaluated and two winners selected by a Judging Panel of three world-renowned cardiologists.
Chairman: André Bozio MD, Professor of Cardiology, Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, Head of Pediatric Cardiology and Congenital Heart Disease Department, Cardiology Hospital Louis Pradel, Hospices civils de Lyon
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Dr. André Bozio is Professor of Cardiology at University Claude Bernard Lyon, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Cardiology and Adult Congenital Heart diseases, Cardiology Hospital, Hospices Civils de Lyon. He received his MD degree from the Faculty of Medicine of Lyon. After training in USA and Canada, Dr. Bozio is recognized for having developed Echocardiography in Pediatric Cardiology including Foetal Cardiology in France since the seventies. He is the Director of inter-university Diploma of Echocardiography and teacher of the Foetology Diploma. His research and teaching concern a variety of congenital cardiac diseases, including coronary artery congenital anomalies, infective endocarditis, pediatric heart transplantation, genetic in congenital heart malformations and prenatal diagnosis. He has authored or co-authored more than 130 published papers and 15 book chapters.
Dr. Bozio is past-President of the Association for European Pediatric Cardiology AEPC (2007-2010) and serve as member of European Society of Cardiology Congress Program Comities (2007-2010). He represented AEPC at the Adult Congenital Pediatric Council of the American College of Cardiology (2010) and at the Japanese Society of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery (2008-2010).
He is a past member of the Board of Pediatric Cardiology of the French Society of Cardiology and now member of the Council of the European Cardiology Section Foundation.
Klaus G. Schmidt MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Director of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Pneumology, University Medical Center, Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf, Germany
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Dr. Klaus G. Schmidt is Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Pneumology at the University Medical Center of the Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf, Germany.
He received his MD at the Medical School of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and went on to further special education in pediatrics and pediatric cardiology at the University Children’s Hospital in Heidelberg. During these years he spent some time at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, UK, and at the Division of Pediatric Cardiology, University of California, San Francisco, USA, where he was the recipient of a fellowship award of the American Heart Association (1987/88). In July 2000 he was appointed as Director of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Pneumology, University Medical Center, Düsseldorf.
His research and teaching activities concentrate on non-invasive imaging of congenital heart disease, particularly on establishing prenatal diagnosis and controlling fetal treatment of cardiac conditions, on fetal circulatory physiology, and on interventional treatment options in pediatric cardiology. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 published papers and 20 book chapters and has served as a reviewer for numerous journals in the related fields. In 1991, he received the ‘Adalbert-Czerny-Prize’ of the German Association for Pediatrics. He is a member of several professional societies related to cardiology and pediatrics and has served as a member of the Council of the Fetal Working Group of the Association for European Pediatric Cardiology (AEPC) from 1996 to 2002 and as a member of the General Council of the AEPC from 2002 to 2009.
Gurleen Sharland MD, Consultant/Reader Fetal Cardiology, Fetal Cardiology Unit, Evelina Children's Hospital, Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
Gurleen Sharland is head of an internationally renowned busy tertiary centre for fetal cardiology, delivering innovative and high standards of regularly audited practice which other centres emulate. She has a national and worldwide reputation and is regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of fetal cardiology. As a result she is frequently contacted for advice and second opinions from other units in UK and also internationally.
She has published widely in the field of fetal cardiology with 91 papers, 2 books and several book chapters in other books. She has given over 100 invited talks at international meetings and has been invited to chair sessions at scientific meetings. She has also been active in both organising and teaching in courses and symposia. She acts as a regular reviewer of research papers for high impact international journals.
She is a full time NHS Consultant, working as the lead clinician in the one of the largest fetal cardiac units in the UK and in the world. Her research is therefore clinically based on documenting the accuracy of diagnosis, the spectrum of cardiac abnormality seen in the fetus, the outcome and associations of cardiac lesions diagnosed in utero and the natural history and progression of these lesions. She has conducted specific projects that have had a major contribution in improving the outcome of aortic stenosis and hypoplastic left heart syndrome and have formed the basis for prenatal intervention for left heart disease. She was very involved in the development of the management strategy for hypoplastic left heart syndrome at her institution. Their published experience of the management of fetal arrhythmias has provided a protocol that other units have followed.
She has developed and maintains a large single centre cohort database on all fetal cardiac anomalies seen in the unit since 1988 comprising around 30,000 patients. This study of around 4000 fetal cardiac anomalies is one of the largest prospective single centre cohort study in this discipline in Europe.
She has had an active role in teaching ultrasonographers and Obstetricians performing routine obstetric ultrasound scans in the UK and was responsible for setting up the training programme for prenatal screening for congenital heart disease in the South East Thames Region of England. This has resulted in the South East having the highest prenatal detection rates of congenital heart disease in the UK.
She chaired the committee for developing Guidelines for Fetal Cardiology Practice for both the UK (on behalf of the British Congenital Cardiac Association 2010) and Europe (on behalf of the Association of European Paediatric Cardiologists 2003). These guidelines define the current management of optimal fetal cardiology practice.
She is committed to improving the quality of the information given to families where a child has been diagnosed with congenital heart disease in pregnancy. She Chaired the British Heart Foundation committee developing national information leaflets on congenital heart disease for parents (Understanding Your Childs Heart – www.bhf.org.uk). These leaflets are now being published as both a web based and traditional leaflet resource for families.