James E. Lock MD

Dr. James Lock is Cardiologist-in-Chief and Chairman of the Department of Cardiology at Children's Hospital Boston, and the Alexander S. Nadas Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lock attended medical school at Stanford University, pursued a pediatric residency and cardiology fellowship at the University of Minnesota, and trained in cardiovascular physiology for two years at the University of Toronto, Hospital for Sick Children. Scientific work on pulmonary vascular control was supported by an AHA Established Investigator Award, the March of Dimes (Basil O'Connor Award), and the National Institutes of Health (RO1 HL). Dr. Lock shifted his research focus to experimental interventional cardiology, providing most of the basic research in that field. In 1984, he joined Children's Hospital as Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and became Department Chair in 1993.

Dr. Lock has invented several cardiac catheterization devices and has developed several dozen new non-surgical procedures to improve care for children with complex heart disease. In September 1999, the CardioSEAL device developed by Dr. Lock and others became the first septal occlusion device to receive FDA approval for use inside the human heart. He has authored or co-authored 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers. He is the president of Boston Children's Heart Foundation, the president of the Aldo Castaneda Foundation, and serves on the Finance Committee Board of Directors of the Children's Hospital.

During his research career, Dr. Lock has trained nearly a hundred academic physicians in cardiopulmonary physiology, experimental interventional cardiology, and clinical interventional cardiology. Beginning five years ago, he and his colleagues started a highly innovative program to standardize clinical care in a fashion that improves outcomes, reduces unnecessary utilization, and supports innovation. That program, termed SCAMPs, is now rapidly gaining acceptance throughout the medical community.