Overseas training to bring life-saving heart care back home

Published: 29 September 2026

Dr Rahul Gandhi will train at Mount Sinai, New York, with Heart Foundation support to target health inequity and improve heart care in New Zealand.

From a young age, Dr Rahul Gandhi has been acutely aware and concerned with the inequity present in healthcare. This understanding is what inspired his career in cardiology; his goal is for a future where all New Zealanders can access the care they need, when they need it the most.

“It struck me that some people received better healthcare than others, not because they were more deserving, but because of where they lived or what services they could access,” he explains.

Throughout his training at the University of Auckland and the University of Otago, these concerns only became more pressing.

“I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘What is it that is causing this inequity? Why are we mopping the floor when the tap is still running? Where is the tap, and how can we turn it off?’”

It was these questions that led him beyond clinical medicine and sparked his interest in health systems, delivery and global health, with a focus on improving access to diagnostic techniques and risk detection.

Improving heart healthcare access for all New Zealanders through world-class learning

Rahul has been awarded an Overseas Training and Research Fellowship to pursue an opportunity at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, one of the world’s leading centres in cardiovascular research and innovation. It is during this tenure that he’ll focus on CT and MRI scanning technology and how this can be used to detect heart disease risk and heart damage in patients.

Rahul’s research also has a focus on cardio-oncology, an emerging field dedicated to protecting the hearts of patients undergoing cancer treatments.

“This fellowship will allow me to determine which heart artery narrowings are particularly at risk of complete blockage and which ones are more stable, using CT scans. The heart MRI techniques will help me determine how well the heart squeezes and detect swelling or scarring, especially in those patients that are receiving cancer treatments,” explains Rahul. “We will test how consistent these measurements are between different readers and scanners and report simple quality scores so any hospital can copy the approach confidently.”

Rahul hopes his fellowship will deliver several key outcomes; all aimed at bringing the knowledge home to New Zealand to improve heart healthcare for our communities.

Simple, explainable risk scores: Using features from the CT scan, his team will build and test a risk score that helps doctors identify which patient is more likely to have a heart attack in the near future. The score will be designed to be transparent and easy to include in a standard report. They will also define sensible ‘trigger points’ for MRI strain that suggest early heart weakness in cancer patients, linked to blood tests and other MRI markers.

Fairer access to quality care: Standard ‘how-to’ guides and quality checks will make it easier for hospitals of different sizes (including regional centres) to deliver the same high standard of imaging, supporting equity for Māori, Pacific Peoples and rural communities.

Early warning, fewer surprises: By spotting dangerous plaque (fatty deposits on artery walls) on CT scans doctors can act sooner with risk factor management such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, reducing the chance of heart attacks.

Better care for people with cancer: When ultrasound images are unclear, an MRI check can confirm whether the heart is safe to continue cancer therapy. This means fewer unnecessary pauses in treatment and fewer emergency visits.

A need to shift from being ‘the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’

“I place a huge importance in preventing harm before it happens,” says Rahul. “And supporting overseas training and research fellowships helps this prevention happen. There’s a strong history of heart specialists who’ve received this support from the Heart Foundation and now lead pioneering work across the country, in both research and clinical care.”

With support from the Heart Foundation, Rahul will now have the chance to learn in a world-leading environment, strengthen global links, and return with knowledge that could help change the future of heart care in New Zealand.

“There are questions that need to be asked that could be considered audacious,” he says. “Going to such places, having the courage to ask these questions, you can test the boundaries a little bit. That’s the benefit of overseas training opportunities.”

Heart Foundation Medical Director Dr Gerry Devlin says sending New Zealand cardiologists overseas to learn from the best in the world is vital to the Heart Foundation’s research investment.

“The knowledge and expertise Rahul will bring back to New Zealand has the potential to change how we detect and prevent heart damage for years to come.”