Prof. Rhys Thomas
Professor, University Of Wales & Hywel Dda University Health Board
Professor Rhys Thomas MB’BS MD FRCA Dip IMC RC’Ed
Experience and skills
Graduated from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London, in 1995. After house jobs in London and a year of training in Cairns, Australia, he trained in Anaesthesia. After passing his primary FRCA, a career in the Army became too attractive to turn down. He joined the Army in 1999 and excelled with the Airborne Forces. In 2005 he was posted to Baltimore Shock Trauma, Maryland, USA to complete a Trauma Anaesthesia Fellowship with the world-renowned Baltimore Shock Trauma Centre.
National Clinical Guidelines
He wrote the original Damage Control Shock Resuscitation strategy. He established this as the resuscitation of choice for the UK Trauma Centres and worldwide (Battlefield Resuscitation Published Current Opinion of Critical Care). He has over 20 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
National Service Creation
Co-Founded Wales’s Emergency Medical Retrieval & Transfer service with the Welsh Air Ambulance. With the help of his great friend Dr Dindi Gill they wrote and delivered two business justification cases and a full business case and established the first completely new National Service in Wales for 20 years in April 2015.
National Leadership
He returned to research after becoming the National Director of the new Emergency Medical & Retrieval service.
Research
In 2017, he jointly completed a Medical Doctorate on ‘The use of Erythropoietin in Blast & Trauma and Inflammation’ at DSTL Porton Down & Swansea University.
Invention
In 2020 at the start of Covid, after a call for new innovative technology to combat the Covid Pandemic. He invented, patented, tested, and gained full approval with the MHRA with a new novel CPAP device designed as a biological Counter Measure in pandemics to the UK Ventilator challenge with his CTEX CPAP device.
Following his experience with developing the CPAP device, he also invented The Corsi-Rosenthal-Thomas (CRT) HEPA Filter that children could easily make themselves cheaply to produce clean, safe air in classrooms. This was shared freely and is now used worldwide to great benefit.
Medical Technology & Business
He founded and is CEO of Virtual Ward Technology Ltd and Health Drive Digital Ltd. This was borne out of our requirement for monitoring to allow our CTEX CPAP Oxygenation Devices to be used in the home.
This established the companies as world leaders in Virtual Ward creation.
VWT and HDD are involved in multiple trials with the NHS, Social Care and Industry and are supported by Appian, Google and the University Of Wales in their development.
Recognition
In July 2022, he was awarded a Fellowship of the University of Wales Trinity St David’s for Services to Medicine in Covid and in March 2023 Awarded a Professor of Practice. He is now leading the way with Digital Health and Social Care and has several trials of his software ongoing around the UK. When he is not running in the hills around Wales, he works hard on his farm in West Wales.