The CMAs telemedicine service is up and running and helping patients in both Scotland and Belfast.

The £9,000 video conferencing equipment, paid for by the association, has been used to allow face-to-face consultations between Professor William McKenna's inherited heart disease team at the Heart Hospital in London and Dr Iain Findlay at the Royal Alexandra in Paisley and with Dr Pascal McKeown at the Royal Belfast Hospital.

During the consultations the specialists have discussed individual patient symptoms, ECGs and echocardiograms and best treatments.

CMA chief executive Robert Hall said - "The first consultations have gone very well and the medics involved and their patients found them very beneficial".

The aim of the service is to improve regional services for families with cardiomyopathy. Instead of patients being referred to top specialists in London, discussions on them can take place online. This not only spreads good practice round the UK but also reduces the need for patients, often not in good health, to travel to London.

The organisation of the telemedicine discussions in Scotland is being carried out by our nurse specialist - Joan Anusas, and the CMAs Stephanie Cruickshank in London. The association is still campaigning to get a nurse like Joan in post at the Royal Belfast Hospitals. It is also looking at putting more money into improving cardiomyopathy services at other UK hospitals, including installing more telemedicine links.

The new services are not designed as a referral point for every patient with cardiomyopathy, but for patients who need clinical, echocardiogram or genetic advice. The CMA is looking at the various needs in the regions, such as local cardiologists views on the service we can offer, what local resources are in place and fundraising opportunities. In the longer term it is planned to approach the Department of Health and the British Heart Foundation for extra funding to maintain and extend the services, which would be similar to the specialist clinics recommended in the new standards of inherited heart disease care announced by the government in March 2005.

These standards were in a new chapter on arrhythmias and sudden death in the National Service Framework for Heart Disease.