José Silva Cardoso is the principal investigator of the research group CardioCare, at CINTESIS, and the coordinator of an international project in the field of heart failure telemonitoring, of which is part the project Deus Ex Machina (DeM) – Symbiotic technology for societal efficiency gains, funded with 2.5 million euros by N2020.

Choosing Medicine was against all expectations. “In my family they are all engineers or military men. If it were not for his glasses, I would have been an aviator,” he jokes, as he says that he only decided at age 15 that he would be a doctor, partly because he “was a hypochondriac and wanted to know everything about diseases,” but mainly because of the remarkable reading of the books about Ronald Ross, physician and Nobel laureate in medicine responsible for discovering the mode of transmission of malaria, and Albert Schweitzer, a doctor who made a mission in Africa and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.

He graduated and earned his Doctorate in Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, and is currently an associate professor and head of the Cardiology Department of the Hospital Center of São João. Looking back, he confessed: “I became a doctor not when I graduated in medicine, but when I got sick with something more than a flu. On that day I realized that patients want the doctor’s proficiency, but they also want someone with whom they can feel safe. Getting sick is a founding experience. In my early years, the technical-scientific aspect prevailed, and contact with patients lacked interest. I learned that the doctor is more than a technician, it is a human being. ”

Is it possible to practice this type of medicine today? For Silva Cardoso, it is not only possible as it is “absolutely necessary. It’s easy to drift across technology. Information should not be confused with knowledge or wisdom. Physicians, in their splendor, should not only be well informed or knowledgeable, but they must be wise, which results from their human experience. I do not pretend to be wise, though. I like to think that I’m on a learning path. I still consider myself an apprentice.”

Research runs through his veins, giving him “inexplicably fascinating him”. Like love does, he adds. He has embraced it with all his heart since early on, adding up some 50 articles published in important international journals, 15 multicentre clinical trials and several international projects. He is a reviewer of the scientific journals ESC-Heart Failure, Heart Journal and Portuguese Journal of Pneumatology, having been in charge of the Portuguese Cardiology Society between 2013 and 2015. He was recently awarded by the Brazilian Society of Cardiology.

At CINTESIS, he found space for new “flights”. “In Portugal, biomedical research is not always carried out in the best conditions because there is not much time and because there is a tradition of isolation. At CINTESIS, I found a mentality of respect for people and facilitation of work, rather than artificial barriers and difficulties. In addition, CINTESIS is a center with many capacities, with a confluence of multiple knowledge and multiple capacities, which allows us to work with multidisciplinary teams and to develop large-scale scientific research at the highest level. And this allows us to obtain funds from European institutions”, he says gladly.

The multidisciplinary nature is actually the factor he highlights of the Research Center: “CINTESIS enables an extremely stimulating multidisciplinary work. In our General Assemblies, with engineers, psychologists, psychiatrists, statists, computer scientists, cardiologists, nurses, magic happens and we are more than the sum of the parts. ”

Currently, he leads an international project to develop a telemonitoring system for heart failure that will last for a decade and comprises two complementary projects: the SmartBeat project, of which he is a medical coordinator, worth 3.2 million euros, and the Deus ex Machina project, which he leads and whose funding amounts to 2.5 million euros, involving four Portuguese universities (University of Porto, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, University of Minho and University of Aveiro). Its purpose is to create a prototype that is marketable. “In medicine, this is still not a common thing. Connecting science to production in order to create economic value is also important for creating self-financing,” he says.

At 61, he prefers to talk about other ages but the chronological, and hopes to work for as long as physically able. “I continue to look at myself as someone around the age of 30, with the same enthusiasm and energy. Retirement? Only when forced by death.”

1-Year Ambition

An evaluation of the research units that led to the enlargement of the CardioCare team is under way. In the short term, I will promote a General Assembly for each of us to present their projects and see how we can collaborate. At the moment, there are researchers dedicated to the areas of heart failure, telemonitoring, epidemiology, development of new drugs and new applications, cardiomyopathies, invasive cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation, among others.

10-Year Ambition

I hope I can implement the telemonitoring project and that this will be a source of funding for CINTESIS, FMUP and the CHSJ.

Life Beyond Research

Life should not be a way to spend the days, but to find meaning for the days. I have lived this intensely since I was 16 years old. This is the central dimension of my existence. I have learned that the present moment is the only thing that is real and therefore I try to live deeply immersed in the “here” and “now”. I believe there is where paradise is. What we have are instants, but they are the proof of a possibility of harmony with the world, which does not necessarily mean happiness. Being happy is a side effect. This is not scientific, but not everything is science. It is my perception and my path. In a hedonistic time, of minimal and disposable pleasure, to say that suffering is important is politically incorrect, but I believe that suffering always has a purpose for change, evolution and growth, the purpose of making us do things which we would never do by will or by merit.