Screening for Atrial Fibrillation and Hypertension: Time to Act Now

Renate Schnabel is a consultant in cardiology at University Heart Centre Hamburg, Germany. She graduated from medical school in Mainz, Germany in 2002. After a research fellowship at the Framingham Heart Study, Boston University, she moved to Hamburg. She works with clinical and population cohorts and leads national and EU-funded international consortia. She is PI of the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research. Her research interest is in digital cardiology, atrial fibrillation and heart failure, and omics for cardiovascular risk assessment. Very active within professional organizations, she is member on councils of the European Society of Cardiology, American Heart Association and the German Cardiac Society.

Prof Alta Schutte is Principal Theme Lead of Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; with a joint appointment as Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. She has extensive experience in working in the field of hypertension and cardiovascular disease with approx. 450 publications in the field. She serves as Editor of the AHA Journal, Hypertension and is on the Editorial Board of several cardiovascular journals, such as Hypertension, the Journal of Hypertension, Journal of Clinical Hypertension, Journal of Human Hypertension, Current Hypertension Reports and BMC Medicine. She is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) and the Royal Society of South Africa; the Past President of the Southern African Hypertension Society (SAHS); and Past President of the International Society of Hypertension.

Prof Ben Freedman is currently Director External Affairs at the Heart Research institute and Group Leader of its Heart Rhythm and Stroke Prevention Group. 

He is a Honorary Professor of Cardiology at the University of Sydney and former head of Department of Cardiology, Concord Hospital. 

In 2015 with five others he formed the AF SCREEN International Collaboration, which now has well over 2,000 members from 40 countries, including many of the foremost names in atrial fibrillation (AF) research. He has chaired the group in four important white papers/Frontiers Reviews on screening for AF to prevent stroke published in Circulation, the premier journal of the American Heart Association.