EAPCI Focus on CathGo - An interview with Francesco Saia, Co-chair of the EAPCI NIFYI Committee

EAPCI Focus on CathGo

Francesco Saia, Co-chair of the EAPCI NIFYI Committee

What is CathGo and why is it important?

CathGo1 is an online search engine to screen and identify European centres offering training opportunities for interventional cardiology fellows. This excellent initiative was launched by the former EAPCI NIFYI Committee based on the following considerations:

1) education and exchange of experiences between young cardiologists are priorities for the ESC and for EAPCI;

2) fellowship programmes are of extraordinary value for young interventional cardiologists’ growth, both from the professional and from the human standpoint;

3) there are many young interventionalists who are eager to enrol for interventional cardiology fellowship programmes; however, requests tend to be clustered around a few renowned centres that are often not capable of accepting all applicants;

4) there are several high-level European institutions, although some of them less famous, that may offer excellent fellowship programmes; in exchange, these centres may find an enthusiastic helper for clinical and research activities and ultimately increase their visibility.

In short, CathGo was designed with the goal of addressing all these unmet needs.

On a practical level, on the CathGo website, there is a database of European centres willing to offer dedicated clinical and/or research training for young interventional cardiologists, together with contact details. The database can be filtered by the candidates based on personal needs and expectations, using basic characteristics and requests of the hosting centres.

What are the objectives of CathGo for the coming years?

We believe that CathGo is a great initiative, and has proved to be useful for many young interventional cardiologists. Yet, there is room for improvement. It is the intention of the EAPCI and of the present NIFYI Committee, chaired by Gabor G. Toth and myself, to enhance the functionality of the website, facilitating research and matching fellows and centres better. Along these lines, we would like to implement a new module as a flipside of CathGo, named FindTalent. In other words, we would like to create a database of fellow candidates that can be searched by the potential hosting centres. With a well designed filtering tool, we are convinced that this platform will further improve the chance of finding the best matches between fellows and hosting centres.

Finally, a possible future perspective for fellowship programmes stemming from CathGo would be a formal endorsement by the ESC/EAPCI in terms of centre accreditation, quality control of the fellowship programme and final certification. However, this is part of a broader and challenging project for our association, aiming at harmonisation of education and training in Interventional Cardiology among European countries.

Francesco Saia, MD, PhD, Co-Chair of the EAPCI NIFYI Committee