Dr Quan Huynh is currently a Heart Foundation Postdoc Fellow. Quan’s research is in the important and common problem of heart failure — a cardiovascular disease that is overtaking heart attack in middle age as a major manifestation of disease burden and cost. Hospitalisation due to heart failure is among the highest rates in Australia and has been estimated at $840 million.

Quan’s work on heart failure has focused on measuring the risk and reducing readmission's in patients with heart failure. He has recently developed a novel risk tool to predict readmission and mortality in heart failure, and validated it on an Australia-wide sample of heart failure patients. This work has shown that risk assessment can be used to rationalise the selection of patients for disease management programs to reduce readmission and death in heart failure. These findings are important because the current approach of unselective application of a non-intensive program is less efficient than use of the same resources to deliver a higher-intensity intervention to high-risk patients.This approach not only reduces risks and improves prognosis for patients, but also substantially reduces health care cost.