Innovator at Heart: The Story of an Invention that Saved Millions of Lives

INNOVATOR AT HEART is the remarkable story of a young doctor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who invented the medical version of the common paper clip: the “in-motion” cardiac stress test, widely trusted and routinely performed around the world. In the last 50 years, it has saved millions of lives. What isn’t well known is the fascinating and surprising story of how the test was invented. Innovator at Heart starts in wartime Yugoslavia, where Likar grew up with only a rudimentary formal education. At 18, he got special permission, with help from a highly placed uncle in the secret service, to move to London, only to be told by English school officials that he was not fit for an academic high school. Undaunted, he managed to get into medical school and ended up as one of the top medical students in the U.K. Then, at the very moment when cardiology was on the brink of great things, such as the world's first open heart surgery, Likar won a fellowship to Johns Hopkins. The topic he chose to investigate had nothing to do with the glamour of open heart surgery. Instead, he set out to solve one of the big mysteries in the field: How could you record the electrical activity of the heart while the patient was moving? If you could, it would be far easier for doctors to detect danger signs that could lead to a deadly heart attack. Within a year, Likar discovered the answer -- a test that would be used around the world to detect silent signs of heart trouble. Yet, Likar's achievement was not widely known or rewarded until he wrote this inspiring book.