Title: Founder and President
Company: Pacemaker Patient Advocacy Group
Location: Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, United States
Terrell M. Williams, Founder and President at Pacemaker Patient Advocacy Group, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Engineers for dedication, achievements, and leadership in medical device innovation and design.
With an aptitude for innovation, Mr. Williams was very interested in finding solutions to known problems and in new discoveries that can suggest new unmet needs. He enjoyed physic in high school and on Career Day, a visiting engineer from a local company convinced him that an education in engineering was the path to take. After a semester at LeTourneau University, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1967. He accepted a creative electrical engineering position at innovative 3M, 1967 to 1969. A family need inspired his interest in new advances in the treatment of heart disease. He was responsible for the drive system of an implantable heart, funded by NIH, at the Applied Science Division of Litton Industries from 1969 to 1971. He worked with visionary physicians while at Medtronic, Inc. for 41 years, resulting in 49 U.S. patents; followed by retirement in 2012.
A worldwide pacing paradigm shift from bypassing the cardiac conduction system to pacing it is proving feasible due to Mr. Williams’ inventorship of the Medtronic Model 3830 Lead and Model C315HIS lead delivery catheter. Conventional pacing, since 1957, all too often results in what doctors call “pacing-induced cardiomyopathy,” or heart failure. Instead of bypassing the cardiac conduction system, pacemaker implanters now find it feasible to pace the conduction system of the heart, “the only pacing method for truly physiologic ventricular activation.” This results in paced patient morbidity and mortality reduction.
Earl Bakken challenged new employees, in 1971, to “work with visionary physicians on devices that fit the Medtronic Mission,” as he had done to produce the first wearable pacemaker.
Continuing into retirement, Mr. Williams works with visionary doctors to provide new tools for physiological ventricular pacing. He was granted two more patents in 2020 and has three more patents pending. Those inventions are now available for implementation by interested enterprises.
Mr. Williams feels an obligation to promote patient empowerment, for knowledgeable involvement in decisions that affect their healthcare through the website of the non-profit, the Pacemaker Patient Advocacy Group.
He is active as a member of the Executive Committee, headed by Bailor University and the Virginia Commonwealth University, working to accelerating the already rapidly evolving practice of how pacemakers are applied to failing hearts. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Mr. Williams regularly attends the annual worldwide Physiology of Pacing Symposium, where leading pacing professionals report on their studies, designed to improve understanding of how pacing relates to cardiac physiology and paced patient outcomes. The meeting offers innovators insight into the future and is attended by industry.
Wisdom is promised to those who need it and ask, and he does, often praying for wisdom in the quiet of the evening, before falling to sleep.
On Twitter: @PacemakerPAG
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