Dr. Alfred Blalock, a surgeon, and Dr. Helen Taussig, a pediatric cardiologist, first developed the Blalock-Taussig procedure in 1944 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Blalock had already established an excellent reputation through his discovery of why people go into shock, which saved countless lives during World War II.

Dr. Taussig was the head of the pediatric cardiology clinic at Johns Hopkins University, though  she was denied her first choice of internal medicine because of her gender. Dr. Taussig discovered the reason why many infants were being born as blue baby and Dr. Blalock had already developed a procedure that could be modified to treat the identified problem. Blalock and Taussig, along with laboratory technician, Vivien Thomas, developed their technique on laboratory animals and then on children, with great success. Their pioneering work was the foundation for the many complex techniques that have since been developed to treat certain types of heart defects.