The founder of the Roanoke Heart Institute, John F. Schmedtje Jr., MD, graduated from the Honors Program in Medical Education of Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois in 1981. He was an intern in Internal Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine and subsequently obtained a Masters Degree in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his Residency in Internal Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and stayed on to be an Instructor in the Section on Hypertension and Clinical Pharmacology at Baylor. Subsequently he served as a Cardiovascular Disease Fellow and NIH National Research Service Award Trainee at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia.
Upon completing his training in Cardiology, Dr. Schmedtje joined the faculty of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas as Assistant Professor and Medical Director of the Cardiac Care Unit in 1991. In 1998 he was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Heart Failure Services at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2000, Dr. Schmedtje began building a private practice in Roanoke, Virginia, and in 2003, he founded the Roanoke Heart Institute.
Dr. Schmedtje is currently Board Certified in the specialties of Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He is formally recognized for his expertise by the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance as well. He is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. He is the Medical Director for the accredited Echocardiography and Nuclear Cardiology laboratories of the Roanoke Heart Institute.