Dr. Carolyn Lam is a Senior Consultant Cardiologist at the National Heart Centre Singapore, having pioneered the first Women’s Heart Clinic in Singapore. Academically, she serves as a tenured Full Professor at Duke-National University of Singapore, having also graduated from the Stanford Executive Program in 2015, and obtained a PhD at the University Medical Centre Groningen, the Netherlands in 2016. In the field of MedTech, Dr. Lam is co-founder of Us2.ai, an award-winning startup dedicated to the automation of the fight against heart disease by applying artificial intelligence to echocardiography (ultrasound of the heart).

Dr. Lam is world-renown for her expertise in heart failure, and particularly heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) — the type of heart failure that affects mostly elderly women and is the predominant type of heart failure in ageing societies worldwide; yet until very recently without an effective treatment and thus representing one of the largest unmet needs in cardiovascular medicine. Her research has been focused on understanding the epidemiology and pathophysiology of HFpEF, in order to identify novel therapeutic targets and design effective clinical trials. Her publications have ranged from fundamental animal disease models to comprehensive hemodynamic characterization (including echocardiographic and circulating biomarkers) of human disease and large cohort studies; with her PhD highlighting “Novel insights into HFpEF”. Most notably, her work as part of the global steering committee of the PARAGON and EMPEROR-Preserved trials contributed to the first FDA-approved treatment for HFpEF, as well as the first robustly positive clinical outcomes trial in HFpEF to date.

Dr. Lam’s leadership in the field is recognized in her appointment to the 2021 European Society of Cardiology Heart Failure Guidelines Task Force, and as International Honorary Fellow of the Heart Failure Society of America 2021. Her accomplishments are also recognized in numerous awards and grants: She is a recipient of the NMRC Senior Investigator Clinician Scientist Award, Programme Lead of A*STaR’s Asian neTwork for Translational Research and Cardiovascular Trials (ATTRaCT), Principal Investigator of ASIAN-HF (multinational study across 11 Asian countries) and Executive Committee member/ Lead of multiple global clinical trials. She has published >350 articles in journals including NEJM, JAMA, Lancet, Circulation, and European Heart Journal; and has been recognized in the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher 2021 in the field of Clinical Medicine (recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/) and as a World Expert by Expertscape’s PubMed-based algorithms (top 0.1% of scholars writing about Heart Failure over the past 10 years; Heart Failure: Worldwide – Expertscape.com). She is lead author of the chapter on HFpEF for Braunwald’s Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine, 12th Edition — the award-winning textbook trusted by generations of cardiologists for the latest, most reliable guidance in the field. She serves as Associate Editor for Circulation (top Cardiology Journal) and Eur J Heart Fail.

Dr. Lam is also well-known for championing women in cardiovascular science. She is passionate about about investigating sex differences in cardiovascular disease, including the role of gender disparities. She has spoken and published widely on the predominance of women suffering from HFpEF, and the need for sex-specific approaches to heart disease. She established the first Women’s Heart Clinic in 2011 – the first in Singapore and Asia — a unique clinical service addressing the top killer among Asian women (cardiovascular disease), tailored to the specific needs of women, and recognizing important sex differences in cardiovascular risk that impact clinical care. She is a long-standing advocate for women’s heart health, and the only Commissioner from Asia appointed in an international team for The Lancet’s Commission for Women and Cardiovascular Disease (www.womencvdcommission.org).

As co-founder of Us2.ai, Dr. Lam was responsible for setting the medical direction of the company, ensuring its market leading position in the field of machine learning applied to cardiovascular disease detection. She formulated the company’s strategic vision for clinical research and development, creating new revenue sources and collaborations with the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Us2.ai clinched top prize at SLINGSHOT 2019, is listed as Forbes Asia 100 to Watch, and won the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest 2021. Finally, Dr. Lam is familiar to the Singapore public as the Resident Doctor of the health television programme “Body and Soul” by MediaCorp Singapore for 8 seasons, and familiar to the medical community at large as the host of the weekly worldwide podcast “Circulation On The Run”.