Thomas Bauld

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Get to know Thomas Bauld, who worked in Michigan.

Thomas is a biomedical engineer who is retired from practice. During his last active years on the job, from November 2007 – June 2016, he worked at the VHA National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

One issue he worked on was the transition of enteral feeding components to avoid adverse events due to tubing misconnections. He always enjoyed working and making presentations with nurses, physicians and patient safety professional groups building collaborations, effective teams and promoting clinical engineering.

NCPS promotes best practices for safe patient care and optimal patient care utilization throughout the organization. Accordingly, NCPS guides the VHA and external stakeholders on policies and strategies to do the following: measure and mitigate harm to the Veteran and those who support their care; track utilization and address deficient patient admission and discharge practice; model characteristics of a High Reliability Organization, including promotion of clinical team training, a just and safe culture; and evaluation of healthcare solutions, technology, and innovations from both patient safety and value-based perspectives.

Thomas graduated with his Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. He then went on to earn his Doctor of Philosophy Degree (Ph.D.) in Biomedical/Medical Engineering from the said establishment in 1972.

While finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, he changed direction from fundamental research to an applied biomedical engineering management career partly by self-study of the field which was then focusing on the narrow issue of medical device leakage currents.

After starting the first department of Biomedical Engineering at Sinai Hospital of Detroit, Thomas soon began networking with other managers in the Southeast Michigan area and in 1975, organized the Michigan Society of Clinical Engineers, which later widened its membership and its educational offerings to include biomedical engineering technicians (BMETs) and changed its name to the Michigan Society for Clinical Engineering. He co-chaired 3 Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation(AAMI) Regional Meetings at five year intervals in Southeast Michigan. 

While at the University of Michigan Hospitals, he initiated 24 x 7 service coverage. Thomas was among the founders of the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) and chaired the Committee that formulated the definition of a Clinical Engineer. For AAMI, he was been on the Board of Directors, chaired the Awards Committee for seven years and served as the Engineering VP.

Along with a talented group of BMETs with associate degrees, Thomas helped develop a two plus two year bachelor’s degree program in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Technology at Eastern Michigan University in 1996. 

Among his other various positions, he served as district manager for ARAMARK Healthcare (1999 – 2000) and as a biomedical engineer at Aramark CTS (2000 – 2006).

In 1973, while finishing his Ph.D. degree, the Engineers Club of Philadelphia awarded him their Junior Merit Award. With deep curiosity and good preparation, as well as a passion for improving patient safety, Thomas was honored with the AAMI Clinical Engineer of the Year Award in 1985 (only awarded every 5 years). He also received the Tom O’Dea Advocacy Award from the American College of Clinical Engineering in 2017, given to an individual who has written articles, given presentations or led efforts that have advanced the field of CE – particularly in promoting the profession to people in other related fields.

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