The story behind EPIPACE
The Patient Who Changed the Direction of My Work
Early in my electrophysiology practice, I implanted pacemakers in patients of many different ages. One of those patients was a 20-day-old infant with congenital complete heart block.
Her heart was extraordinarily small compared with the pacemaker system and the wire that had to be placed within it. Seeing the size of the hardware relative to such a tiny heart was deeply striking. I remember thinking that there had to be a better solution—something smaller, more appropriate for a child, and less burdensome to the heart it was intended to protect.
That experience became the beginning of the idea that ultimately developed into EPIPACE
Founder biography
Olga Bockeria, MD, PhD, FACC
Professor of Cardiology • Electrophysiologist • Medical-Device Inventor
Dr. Olga Bockeria is a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist with extensive experience in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, pacemaker therapy, cardiac-safety evaluation, and cardiovascular clinical research.
She currently serves as Senior Cardiologist and Core Lab Director in Cardiac Safety at Clario, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific. In this role, she contributes to the centralized evaluation of cardiac-safety and efficacy endpoints in global clinical trials, including ECG, arrhythmia, ambulatory monitoring, and cardiovascular assessments performed according to rigorous clinical and regulatory standards.
Her combined experience in electrophysiology, cardiac-device therapy, clinical trials, and cardiac-safety operations provides EPIPACE with direct expertise in clinical development, cardiac endpoint assessment, data quality, and the standards required to evaluate cardiovascular technologies.