On July 27, the very first real-time MDT tele-consultation in the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University was successfully conducted in the International Telemedicine Center on 22nd floor of Ke Lin Building. The hospital’s MDT team consisting of experts from Cardiology, Cardiac Surgery, Radiology and Medical Ultrasonics had an hour-long, fruitful discussion with a world-renowned cardiologist from UCLA in the United States via video conference devices.

The case was a patient recently admitted to Cardiology Unit I who was diagnosed with advanced heart failure, yet had been refractory to optimal medical therapy. The American consultant was Dr. Ernst R. Schwarz, Professor of Medicine in University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Chairman of the Heart Failure Committee at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Schwarz exchanged ideas with our MDT team and proposed insightful and constructive advice in how we could move forward in managing this complicated, high-risk patient.

After the consultation, participants from our hospital shared their thoughts on the activity. They unanimously gave favorable feedback to this new platform of real-time remote consultation.?