Dr Joe Morton is a senior cardiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He is heavily committed to maintaining the long standing status of the RMH as a centre of excellence for arrhythmia management through his involvement in all aspects of clinical cardiac electrophysiology including complex catheter ablation of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias and cardiac pacing and resynchronisation therapy.

He has a strong desire to increase the access of all patients to these potentially life- saving therapies and is committed to medical research and education at the RMH and University of Melbourne School of Medicine. Dr Joe Morton graduated from the University of Melbourne with a medical degree in 1992. He underwent his residency and registrar training in internal medicine and cardiology at Austin Health. Whilst a cardiology registrar at the Austin Hospital his interest in cardiac electrophysiology was inspired by Professor Andrew Tonkin, Dr Paul Kertes and Dr Angas Hamer. He trained in clinical cardiac electrophysiology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1999-2001) and was fortunate to receive mentorship from Professors Jitu Vohra, Jon Kalman and Harry Mond. He received a National Heart Foundation scholarship and completed a PhD during his fellowship researching atrial electrophysiology, in particular exploring the link between atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation.  His research also involved the evaluation of intracardiac echocardiography, atrial arrhythmias in patients with atrial septal defect, and methods for defining reentrant arrhythmias (entrainment). His work at the RMH established him as an important member of the RMH EP research team led by Professor Jon Kalman.

In 2002 he began a two year clinical postdoctoral electrophysiology fellowship with Professor David Wilber at the Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago Illinois. Once again he received critical funding support from the National Heart Foundation of Australia. During this time Dr Morton gained tremendous experience in the ablation of complex arrhythmias including atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia (VT). In 2004 he returned as a consultant cardiologist to the RMH and introduced new techniques for VT catheter ablation he had learnt from Professor Wilber in the USA. These techniques included epicardial VT mapping and ablation, and sinus rhythm substrate mapping for VT in patients with ischaemic and non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy. These techniques led to the increased utilization of catheter ablation for VT at the RMH. There was already a long history of VT research and treatment at the RMH going back to the 1980’s when Professor Jitu Vohra and Professor James Tatoulis successfully performed high risk surgical VT procedures for patients with life threatening ventricular arrhythmias post myocardial infarction.

Dr Morton has undertaken research into various aspects of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias. His current research interest is in the field of sudden cardiac death, especially in patients with chronic kidney disease. He has ongoing active research projects investigating and defining the substrate for ventricular arrhythmias in cardiomyopathy.

Dr Morton performs a large number of catheter ablation and pacing / device procedures at the RMH, Melbourne Private Hospital and John Fawkner Private Hospital. Dr Morton is available to provide consultations at both the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Western Hospital through their respective arrhythmia clinics, and also through his private rooms at John Fawkner Hospital Cardiology.