Our Team
Prof. Dr. Zeki Çatav
Dr. Çatav completed his specialization as a cardiovascular surgeon at Türkiye Yüksek İhtisas Hospital in 1991. From 1986, when he began his residency there, he was part of the team that set out to store patient data digitally within the clinic, and he led the clinical side of that project from its earliest stages. The system was one of the first electronic patient record systems in Turkey, and one of the first in the world: it ran on a DBase database with software written in Clipper, operating as a multitasking, multiuser system over Novell NetWare. Patients' medical data — an average of 500 to 600 data points per patient, roughly 1,100 fields in total — was stored as searchable, statistically usable variables, allowing medical reports, including discharge summaries, to be generated automatically. The system remains in active use today, with the medical records of more than 75,000 patients logged through it.
In adult cardiac surgery, he works in coronary bypass, valve, and aortic surgery, and is an active member of the heart transplantation and artificial heart support device team.
