During the past 30 years, department of cardiac surgery and cardiology units forming the Institute of Cardiology of Jagiellonian University have become the reference cardiology centre in Southern Poland.

Due to increasing need for consultations of patients hospitalized in the region, telemedical network was created, thanks to the initiative of John Paul II Hospital and the Department of Informatics of the Cracow AGH University of Science and Technology.

Since 2003 DICOM imaging files could have been transmitted. The patients can benefit from immediate remote consultations and thousands of them have been qualified for life saving cardiac interventions. The number of consultations have been increasing and a systematic everyday multidisciplinary consultation system has been created. Every morning, the tele - Heart Team composed of a cardiac surgeon, an invasive and a non-invasive cardiologist is ready to consult. The system is also available 24 hours a day for a cardiac surgeon on duty if urgent cardiosurgical intervention is considered and diagnostic images need to be quickly reviewed. Cooperation instead of competition between cardiac surgeons and invasive cardiologists allowed fruitful discussion, leading to more optimal decision making, including also electrotherapy. Tele – Heart Team was created well before the official ESC guidelines in 2010 indicated that interdisciplinary discussion is optimal way to choose therapeutic options. The number of consultations has been increasing during the past years, reaching 5000 in 2018 (on average 20 per day).

The number of possible diagnostic and therapeutic options increases – not only classical cardiac surgery and percutaneous coronary interventions are possible but also advanced beating heart structural interventions, as well electrotherapy and LVAD implantation etc. Until recently, in addition to diagnostic images, demographic and clinical data of the consulted patients have been sent by fax. The current solution is an electronic clinical data form transmitted between computers and a TeleDICOM server according to the contemporary confidentiality standards. The system was also used to set up Audio-Video-DICOM teleconsultations to exchange ideas and knowledge about rare cardiovascular diseases with experts around the World. The Tele-Heart Team project serves not only as a aid for the patients and physicians but also has a legal value, supporting the decision making. It has been very well adopted and accepted by the medical community.