In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a bright student named Tejas Madhusudan Patel earned his medical degrees with gold medals from B.J. Medical College. He specialised in cardiology and soon turned his attention to a safer, more precise way of opening blocked heart arteries—approaching them through the wrist rather than the groin.

At a time when transradial angioplasty was still uncommon in India, Tejas mastered and refined the technique. He taught it tirelessly, training more than eight thousand cardiologists from India and abroad through his annual TRICO courses. He wrote definitive atlases on the method that became standard references around the world. Later he pushed the frontier further—performing robotic coronary interventions and, in a landmark moment, the world’s first remote telerobotic PCI, demonstrating that expert care could one day reach patients across great distances.

He built and led the Apex Heart Institute in Ahmedabad, served as Professor and Head of Cardiology at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Medical Sciences, and became a visiting professor at the Mayo Clinic—the first Asian to hold that position in its cardiology department.

One young trainee, after a long day in the catheterisation laboratory, asked him, “Sir, why do you still spend so much time teaching the same technique?”

Tejas answered with quiet intensity, “Because every cardiologist I train multiplies the number of lives that can be saved safely. Skill shared is skill multiplied.”

His work earned the Dr. B.C. Roy Award, the Padma Shri in 2015, and the Padma Bhushan in 2024. He continues to innovate, teach and care.

From the wards of Ahmedabad to lecture halls across continents, Dr. Tejas Madhusudan Patel has spent decades making complex heart procedures safer, more accessible and more precise—proving that the best medicine is the one that reaches the patient with the least harm and the greatest hope.