Painter and Hyman: CE

Frank Painter and William Hyman Inducted into the ACCE Hall of Fame

His far reaching influence was recognized by his numerous awards including the Excellence in Engineering Teaching (1996), Cerebral Palsy of Houston (1996), ASTM Meritorious Service (2005), and ACCE lifetime achievement award (2009).

For more information on Bill’s long, outstanding career see link.

William (Bill) Hyman:

(12/13/1945 — 7/31/2019)

Bill Hyman has been inducted (posthumously) into the Clinical Engineering Hall of Fame in recognition of his significant contributions to the advancement of the profession in several key areas. His intensely thought-provoking advocacy for expansion of the C.E. profession has been unique and is still impactful through inclusion of teaching risk management methodologies and the engagement with regulatory processes in academic programs and practices in industry and within healthcare provider institutions. His sphere of influence stretched from Texas A&M University, where he taught for almost 40 years, and where he initiated and promoted the teaching of system safety and human factors engineering and their role in the design of safer medical products, to industry and the healthcare community.

Bill developed a methodology for adverse events investigation and tools to practice problem resolution that resulted in safer medical products, both disposables and reusables, and safer organizations. He used his service on standards committees (e.g., ASTM E-30 on Forensic Sciences, F-4 on Surgical Implants and Medical Devices) to better connect and guide improvements between desired risk control principles and its practical application.

His editorials at Biomedical Safety and Standards, Journal of Clinical Engineering, and books he published guided large followers and established a higher safety bar in design, practice, regulations, and litigations related to medical products quality performance. Bill Hyman’s lifelong achievements and influence on the CE profession are immense and his influence continues even after his untimely death. Clinical engineers and safety officers are better prepared for additional careers in areas that were not considered part of CE field several decades ago. There are more clinical engineers in key positions due to the teaching, publications, and presentations delivered by Bill at international and domestic ACCE events, as well as at NASA, FDA, BME society, AAMI, ASTM and, of course, at Texas A&M University.

Frank Painter:

Frank Painter has been an icon and standard-bearer for the clinical engineering profession for 45 years. He has been inducted into the Clinical Engineering Hall of Fame in recognition of his significant contributions to the advancement of the profession in several key areas: As an active, practicing clinical engineer in the early days of the profession, Frank recognized the need for a professional organization to adequately advocate for clinical engineering. Frank became one of the earliest and most active proponents in the founding of the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE). Frank served for many years on AAMI’s International Certification Commission (ICC) and when that commission elected to terminate its clinical engineering certification, he led the effort to establish the Healthcare Certification Commission (HTCC) under the ACCE Healthcare Technology Foundation (AHTF).

Frank was instrumental in the development of ACCE’s Advanced Clinical Engineering Workshop (ACEW) series and he has delivered dozens of these programs around the world. It is hard to adequately describe the immense value these workshops have had on the international clinical engineering community.

For 20 years Frank taught and mentored clinical engineering students and interns as the Director of the clinical engineering master’s degree program at the University of Connecticut. This program is the “gold standard” for clinical engineering education, in large part because of Frank’s passionate leadership. A sign of Frank’s success is that any survey of today’s generation of clinical engineering leaders