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A cardiologist says embracing diversity will catalyze medical research

Diversity in medicine boosts innovation and has even improved physicians’ ability to prevent transplant rejection.
Photo of a patient's arm with IV drip.
Diversity of researchers and study participants makes a big difference. | iStock/XiXinXing

Data shows that greater gender diversity on company leadership groups leads to improved business outcomes, says Stanford cardiologist Hannah Valantine. Likewise, she says, in medical research, where diversity boosts the development of new technologies.

In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, Valantine, the former inaugural chief officer for scientific workforce diversity at the National Institutes of Health, as well as a senior investigator at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, discusses why increasing the diversity of researchers and study participants is vital to medical innovation. Valantine and host, bioengineer Russ Altman, then explore the barriers that keep new medical technologies, such as a blood test to detect signs of heart transplant rejection, from being used in hospitals.

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