The Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI) is proud to celebrate Dr. Andrew Krahn, who has received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grant through the Spring 2026 competition.
Dr. Krahn’s funded project, Precision Diagnosis and Management of Cardiogenetics: The Hearts in Rhythm Organization (HiRO), will advance a national approach to diagnosing and managing inherited heart conditions.
The CIHR Spring 2026 Project Grant competition approved 439 research grants, representing a total investment of approximately $412 million in health research across Canada.
Improving Diagnosis and Care for Inherited Heart Conditions
Inherited heart conditions include disorders affecting the heart’s electrical system and muscle. Although individually rare, these conditions can have serious consequences, including dangerous heart rhythms, fainting, cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death.
Diagnosing these conditions can be challenging. Symptoms and risks may vary considerably—even among members of the same family—and some people may show few warning signs before experiencing a life-threatening event. More precise ways of combining clinical findings, genetic information and long-term patient data are therefore essential.
Dr. Krahn is an internationally recognized expert in cardiac arrhythmias whose research spans the genetic causes of heart rhythm disorders, sudden cardiac arrest, syncope and the evaluation of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. His work has helped establish national collaborations focused on rare, inherited heart conditions.
At the centre of this work is the Hearts in Rhythm Organization (HiRO), a Canadian network connecting researchers, health care providers, patients and families. HiRO is dedicated to improving awareness and understanding of inherited heart conditions, supporting collaborative research, standardizing care and preventing sudden cardiac death.
Through this new project, Dr. Krahn and the HiRO team will strengthen a precision approach to cardiogenetics—using each patient’s clinical and genetic information to support more accurate diagnoses, individualized risk assessment and better-informed care.
Building on HiRO’s established national research platform, the work will:
- Strengthen collaboration among cardiogenetics researchers and clinical teams across Canada.
- Improve understanding of how inherited heart conditions develop and affect patients and families.
- Integrate genetic findings with clinical information to support more precise diagnosis and risk assessment.
- Advance consistent, evidence-informed approaches to monitoring and managing inherited heart conditions.
- Engage patients and families and translate research findings into practical information for health care providers and the wider community.
The long-term goal is to help patients and families receive clearer answers, more personalized care and appropriate follow-up—while reducing the risk of preventable cardiac events and sudden death.
Making Research Matter for Patients and Families
Inherited heart conditions do not affect patients in isolation. A diagnosis can have important implications for parents, siblings, children and other relatives who may also benefit from assessment or ongoing care.
For this reason, patient and family engagement is a central part of HiRO’s work. The network brings together people with lived experience, clinicians and researchers to ensure that new knowledge is shared effectively and responds to the needs of those most directly affected.
By combining national collaboration with clinical and genetic research, this CIHR-supported project will help move cardiogenetics toward care that is more precise, consistent and responsive to patients and families.
Congratulations to Dr. Andrew Krahn and the entire HiRO team on this important achievement and their continued leadership in improving heart health across Canada.