Bio
Dr. McConnell is a native of Brooklyn, NY and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, obtaining his BS and MS in Electrical/Biomedical Engineering, followed by his MD at Stanford University. He returned to Boston and specialized in Cardiovascular Medicine and Cardiovascular Imaging at Brigham and Women’s and Beth Israel Hospitals and then joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where he also obtained an MS in Clinical Investigation. His early research discovery in echocardiography has become known as “McConnell’s sign.”
He joined the faculty at Stanford in 1998 and went on to become Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and (by courtesy) Electrical Engineering and Molecular & Cellular Physiology. He was Director of Cardiovascular MRI, Preventive Cardiology Clinic, and Cardiovascular Health Innovation at Stanford and also founded and directed the Cardiovascular Imaging at Stanford (CVIS) NIH training program. He was the Principal Investigator for multiple NIH and American Heart Association (AHA) research grants as well as the top-enrolling MyHeart Counts mobile health research study launched with Apple. In 2015 he joined Google/Alphabet leading cardiovascular and digital health projects, including development, validation, and FDA clearances for mobile/wearable devices and AI software with Verily, Google Health, and Fitbit. He is now the Chief Health Officer at Toku to advance AI and retinal imaging for screening and prevention of major health conditions.
Dr. McConnell continues to see patients in the Stanford Preventive Cardiology Clinic and mentor in the Stanford Biodesign program. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles and is a Fellow of the AHA, the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, and the American Society of Echocardiography. He is a founding member of the AHA’s Health Technologies Advisory Group and co-chaired AHA’s 2030 Impact Goal task force and the ACC-Consumer Technology Association’s guidance on Cardiovascular Technology Solutions. In 2022, Dr. McConnell was appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the Board of Directors of the National Fitness Foundation. His book, Fight Heart Disease Like Cancer, was published by Hopkins Press in January 2024.
