Ricardo A. Muñoz

Dr. Muñoz is a leading authority internationally known for his contributions to pediatric cardiac intensive care and telehealth worldwide. He has written three major textbooks in the field of cardiac critical care medicine, and has been the visiting professor or plenary speaker at nearly 200 venues around the world. He graduated from University del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia with a medical degree, and completed his training in pediatrics at Hospital Militar in Bogotá, Colombia. Later he joined Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School to pursue fellowships in anesthesia, and pediatric critical care. He continued his cardiology fellowship training at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Muñoz is board certified in pediatrics, pediatric cardiology, and pediatric cardiac critical care medicine. He is an expert clinician, bedside physician and teacher, who separated with success the cardiac intensive care unit from general intensive care unit, substantially reducing the outcomes for mortality and morbidity. During his tenure, this innovative achievement ranked the cardiac intensive care units he led among the top programs in the country, and was the referred physician for critical ill or complex patient with congenital heart disease. Dr. Muñoz successfully established the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at the University of Miami (Jackson Memorial Hospital) where he served as its first Director. He then joined Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where he founded the first pediatric critical care unit. He served as the head of the Division of Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care, Director of International Affairs for the Heart Institute, and became Medical Director for Global Business and Telemedicine. Presently he serves as Division Chief of Cardiac Critical Care Medicine and Executive Director of Telemedicine for the Children’s National Health System, and Co-Director of the Children’s National Heart Institute. Dr. Muñoz has published extensively on the care and outcomes of critically ill patients, and is the senior author of a number of important articles and publications, and the senior editor of “Handbook of Pediatric Cardiovascular Drugs”, and “Critical Care of Children with Heart Disease, Basic Medical and Surgical Concepts,” also translated into Spanish with wide distribution in Latin America. In recent years, Dr. Muñoz’s work has encompassed teaching and critical care in a far-reaching enterprise which he modestly refers to as Tele-CICU. He established telehealth programs for pediatric cardiac outcomes, and implementation of care delivery using remote telehealth technology. His recent publications in the telemedicine literature emphasized the value of this care delivery model in pediatric intensive care with improvements in survival and reduction in associated cost.