David Birnie

Dr. David Birnie is the Division Head of Cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He was educated in Scotland and received his medical degree (MB ChB) from the Glasgow University in 1990. Dr. Birnie was recruited to the Heart Institute in 2002 as staff cardiac electrophysiologist (EP) and clinician investigator. He was later appointed as Deputy Chief of the Division of Cardiology of the Heart Institute.

Dr. Birnie is a Tier 1 Clinical Research Chair at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ottawa. His major ongoing research interests are cardiac sarcoidosis, selection and optimization of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) for heart failure patients, investigating optimal strategies for complication reduction around EP procedures. Dr. Birnie has been involved in over 500 peer-reviewed presentations, publications, and book chapters.

His clinical focus is on all aspects of cardiac EP including radiofrequency ablation of simple and complex arrhythmias and implantation and follow-up of device therapy. Dr. Birnie is the founding member of the Canadian Heart Rhythm Society and he was elected to the executive committee of the World Association of Sarcoidosis (WASOG) in 2020.