The John Paul II Hospital in Krakow (JP2) is one the largest heart and lung centre in Poland. As one of the best-equipped hospitals it offers 612 beds for treatment of a spectrum of diseases. The Hospital employs the highest qualified and experienced medical staff: 398 physicians, including 11 full professors, 20 associate professors and 116 PhD holders. The organisational structure is divided into 19 wards, 27 outpatient departments and 40 specialist laboratories. The Hospital houses six departments of the Jagiellonian University Medical College: Department of Cardiac and Vascular Diseases, Department of Coronary Heart Diseases, Department of Electrocardiology, Department of Hemodynamics and Angiocardiography, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery and Transplantation and Department of Thoracic Surgery (data from September 2015).

Annually the Hospital admits over 24 000 patients, provides about 124 000 ambulatory consultations, more than 2 200 open-heart surgeries, 11 heart transplants and 36 kidney, more than 2 000 procedures and thoracic surgery, more than 10 000 procedures using interventional cardiology, also every year we made approx. 692 implants pacemakers and approx. 312 implantation of cardioverter.

Our achievements:

·        2005 – World's first implantation of the innovative, seamless heart valve from the horse's pericardium-3F Therapeutics,  

·        2008 - Poland's first performance of the transapical transcatheter aortic valve implantation - TA-TAVI procedure,

·        2008 - Poland's first performance of the transcatheter aortic valve implantation – TAVI procedure,

·        2010 - Pioneering treatment of left ventricular aneurysm close to the beating heart of the

   patient using the unique minimally invasive equipment to close the aneurysm without opening   the heart,

·        2010 - Poland's first implantation of an intrabronchial valve in the patient with lung emphysema,

·        2012 - Poland's first MRI of the human lung using the polarized helium.

Implementation of projects co-funded by the European Union resulted in major alterations of the Hospital structure providing at the same time measurable health effects. A separate administrative unit at the Hospital - Research and Development Office is responsible for comprehensive management of financed and co-financed projects. Its broad and diverse experience allows for professional financial management, project reporting and monitoring of the contract implementation.

JP2 has carried out 40 co-financed projects with the total value of over 123 mln Euro, 73 clinical trials under the supervision of key players in the pharmaceutical branch and 42 scientific projects in cooperation with the Jagiellonian University Medical College. The Hospital created and maintains national and international level partnerships with various entities: university hospitals, R&D institutions, medical clusters, scientific associations, innovative medical companies. The international cooperation between the Hospital and all these institutions in Poland and Europe will provide the project team with a platform for exchanging views and experience in the international medical community.

JP2 gained an ample experience in implementation of several R&D projects. As a result of the project titled “The Development of Krakow Center for Medical Research and Technology” finalized in 2014, Krakow Center for Medical Research and Technology has been created with comprehensive infrastructure for the provision of health care and conduction of the scientific researches with the usage of new ICT technologies, modern medical procedures and knowledge transfer.

JP2 also actively took part in the projects from ICT area like:

·        co-financed by 7th Framework Programme - FI-STAR: Future Internet – Social and Technological Alignment Research. The Project was carried out by 43 partners from 17 European countries. The Project was part of the second stage of the FI-PPP (Future Internet Public-Private Partnership Programme), providing solutions relating to the technology of future Internet (FI). FI-STAR was building on future Internet technology in the health care domain. It validated the FI-PPP core platform concept to build its framework based on the software to data paradigm. The project included carrying out 7 experiments in the field of health care in 7 European countries, serving more than 4 million people.

·        The project “UNIversal solutions in Telemedicine Deployment for European HEALTH  care - United4Health” which main goal was to prove that in order for telehealth solutions to work it is essential that healthcare providers adopt innovative health and care service models. The Project involves 13,000 patients in 15 European regions. The Project will enable data amalgamation across pilot sites and comparison of the results, allowing evaluation of how the same intervention has a different impact on the local healthcare institutions.

·        The project named “Development the European Network in orphan cardiovascular diseases” - aims to level the playing field Malopolska region residents in gaining access to modern medical care through cooperation with European centers and creation of system solutions with Malopolska region partners and in cooperation with partners international from different EU countries: Research Institute of Cardiology, University of Latvia Pauls Stradins Clinical University Hospital in Riga, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences in Kaunas, Das Deutsche Herzzentrum Berlin, Ospedale San Raffaele in Milan.  The project is combining many possible forms of exchange of innovative experiences. Through the organization of study visits to doctors centers of expertise in Europe, training for doctors, conferences and development of existing networks in the Orphan cardiovascular diseases raise the qualifications of doctors from Malopolska region and contribute to the development of unique algorithms proceedings.

·        The project “Informatics platform for the fusion of cardiac imaging” was dedicated to the implementation of state-of-art cloud computing service in cooperation with the scientific and business partner. It is planned to create the unique in Poland IT solution for cardiac imaging which supports diagnosis procedure.

We are interested in starting cooperation in such areas as:

·        Diagnosis - Comprehensive preoperative and follow-up noninvasive cardiac imaging;  Development  of MRI diagnosis using the polarized helium and xenon,

·        Angiology - Noninvasive diagnosis of vascular diseases; Invasive diagnostic procedures;  Interventional treatment of vascular diseases,

·        Immunology - Rare diseases; Cooperation with eminent experts in orphan cardiovascular diseases,

·        Oncology -Tumors in the chest area; Teleconsultation; Cooperation with eminent experts; Development of the Centre for Rare Cardiovascular Diseases (OrdisNet Project)

·        IT/ICT - Development of the existing IT/ICT infrastructure; Implementation of the new IT tools and devices,

·        International exchange between Hospitals - Courses and scholarships for the medical and administrative staff,

·        Cooperation in international projects,

·         Clinical trials,

·        Innovative, medical equipment.