I remember the moment that changed how I think about medicine. A woman in her sixties had survived breast cancer, endured years of treatment, navigated the fear of recurrence, and finally achieved hard-won remission, only to develop heart failure from the chemotherapy that saved her life. Sitting with her in clinic, I realised that victories against one disease sometimes come at the cost of another. That tension has helped shaped everything I do now.
Why This Blog Exists
I’ve created this space to share what I’m learning at the intersection of cardiology and oncology, and to offer a window into how I think about cardiac care more broadly. Whether you’re a patient navigating a new diagnosis, a referring colleague, or simply someone curious about where cardiovascular medicine is heading, I hope you’ll find something useful here.
This isn’t a platform for self-promotion. It’s an attempt to translate the research, clinical observations, and lessons from my career into something accessible and practical.
The Path That Brought Me Here
My route into medicine began in Canada, where I completed my undergraduate studies in health sciences at Western Ontario before moving to Australia for medical school at the Australian National University. What started as curiosity about the heart became a career-long fascination with how we make decisions under uncertainty—particularly in patients with valvular heart disease, where timing and precision matter enormously.
My training didn’t begin with cardiology, though. After medical school, I spent years working across general medicine, infectious diseases, respiratory medicine, and emergency medicine at various teaching hospitals in Canberra and Melbourne. This broad foundation complements how I practice now. Cardiology doesn’t exist in isolation; the patients I see often have diabetes, chronic kidney disease, infections, and complex medication regimens. Therefore, understanding systems external to the cardiovascular system isn’t optional—it’s essential.
During my PhD at the University of Melbourne, I spent four years studying how machine learning and artificial intelligence might help us identify which patients with aortic stenosis will deteriorate, and when. Working with large datasets from hospitals across Queensland and Victoria, I discovered both the promise and the pitfalls of applying computational methods to clinical problems. Some of that novel work incorporating co-morbidities with conventional cardiac markers was published in top cardiology journals like JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging; it taught me to think carefully about the data we use to make decisions.
The pull toward cardio-oncology came later, during my advanced training in Brisbane. Caring for patients whose hearts had been damaged by cancer treatment, or who faced difficult choices between oncological benefit and cardiac risk, I found myself drawn to the questions that sit uncomfortably between specialties. When I was offered a fellowship at the University Health Network in Toronto, one of the world’s leading cardio-oncology programmes, it felt like an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
Now having returned to Brisbane to establish my practice at The Wesley Hospital, I’m bringing together two decades of training and education across three countries into something I hope will be genuinely impactful: careful, evidence-based cardiac care for patients who need it, whether they have valvular heart disease, the cardiac complications of cancer treatment, or the everyday challenges of cardiovascular health.
What You’ll Find Here
In the coming months, I’ll be writing about:
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Cardio-oncology perspectives – practical guidance on protecting the heart during and after cancer treatment based on my cardio-oncology expertise and ongoing post-doctoral research
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Valvular heart disease – particularly aortic stenosis, where I’ve focused much of my PhD research
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Artificial intelligence in cardiology – what it can and can’t do, and why data quality matters more than algorithms
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Clinical insights – observations from practice that might be useful for patients and colleagues
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Research translation – implementing new evidence into actionable knowledge
An Invitation
If something here resonates with you, or if you think differently, I’d welcome the conversation. Medicine advances through dialogue, and the best ideas often come from unexpected places. I don’t have all the answers. No one does. But I’m committed to thinking carefully about the questions and sharing what I learn along the way.
Thank you for reading.
Dr Jonathan Sen
Cardiologist | Clinician-Scientist
Brisbane, Australia
