Shark tank approach a heart starter for research

But, despite the alarming statistics, something as simple as regular walking can dramatically reduce a person’s risk.  
  
This week the Victorian Parliament hosted the Heart Foundation, who showcased their local walking groups, demonstrated CPR and defibrillator use, and provided on-the-spot heart health assessments for MPs, staff and visitors.   
  
‘We're checking people's lipid profiles, so their cholesterol, both good and bad. We're also doing blood pressure checks and we're just giving people a bit of an overview of where they're sitting with that,’ said Heart Foundation Victoria General Manager, Chris Enright.  
  
‘Starting with knowing what your heart health is currently is the first step. From there you can use that information to then maybe think about increasing your physical activity and looking into ways to increase or to improve your nutrition and your dietary intake,’ she said.  
  
'We also want to do a bit of myth busting around defibrillators,’ she said.  

‘It's very, very simple. So we want to show them in use because you never know when you're going to need to do that.’ 

More than 26,000 people have a cardiac arrest out of hospital every year in Australia, and only about 10 per cent of these people survive. But acting quickly can help save lives, according to the Heart Foundation.  
  
If a bystander uses an automated external defibrillator (AED) in addition to CPR, the survival rate shoots up to around 50 per cent.  
  
Research and improved knowledge have seen the rates of cardiovascular disease decline dramatically since the 1980s.  
  
Heart Foundation CEO David Lloyd says the organisation has spent the past 60 years funding research in the form of fellowships and grants to people working in medical research institutes, universities and hospitals.  
  
But for their latest catalyst grant program they have thrown the net much wider.  
  
‘We said you don't have to be a researcher. You can have just an ABN and a good idea,’ he said.  
  
That netted more than 220 proposals, 20 of which will be presented at a two-day ‘shark tank’ event to be held in Melbourne next March and attended by heart foundations from all over the world, as well as funding bodies and private investors.  
  
Ten of those proposals will then form part of the Heart Foundation’s ‘innovation portfolio’.  
  
‘One guy thinks that he can completely remove sodium chloride from the food chain and thereby completely transform Australia's hypertension problem. You've got somebody who's developing 3D printed heart valves which would last much longer than the current. valves, which are metal or pig valves. One good proposition is to regenerate heart muscle after a heart attack through genomic engineering because after a heart attack, heart muscle dies and doesn't grow back,’ he said.  
  
Go to the Heart Foundation’s website to join a walking group in Victoria or find out more.