Dr William Peters is an inventor, author and medical doctor based in Auckland, New Zealand. Dr Peters has 30 years experience in clinical and preclinical research, covering audit, surgical correction of congenital and acquired heart diseases, heart and lung transplantation and mechanical circulatory support.
Dr Peters completed his medical degree at Otago University 1990 and worked as a junior surgical trainee at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney. It was here that he invented devices and methods to allow keyhole cardiac surgery. His patents were aquired by Stanford Surgical Technologies and in 1994 he was invited to join the team at Stanford University, California as inaugural clinical research fellow in minimally-invasive cardiac surgery to help develop and trial the technologies in first-in-man studies there. Dr Peters returned to Melbourne to complete further training in cardiac surgery and transplantation in 1996. He completed a Doctorate in Medicine (Monash) in 2002 (Thesis: ‘Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery using Endovascular Cardiopulmonary Bypass and Cardioplegia’).
Dr Peters also invented and developed implantable non-blood contacting heart assist devices for treatment of chronic heart failure and mentored first-in-man surgeries in Australia, USA, Canada, Germany and England.
An unabiding interest in the nature of spiral blood flow in the ascending aorta led to an insight into the evolution of the human heart and Dr Peters’ first book, 'Per Sanguinem Nostrum' published in 2014. This book details blood as the agent of evolutionary change from fish to man. Following this, an online teaching course entitled ‘Physics of Human Evolution’ was released on Udemy.com in 2016. A ‘basic science’ thesis was subsequently peer reviewed and published in Human Genetics and Embryology in 2017 (‘Basic Science Model of Blood as an Electron-delivery Circuit Describes the Evolution of the Human Circulation’).
Dr Peters is currently a medical officer in paediatric and congenital cardiac surgery at Starship Hospital, NZ. His research focuses on how congenital heart defects may arise as a result of pertubations in the normal mode of cardiogenesis using blood as the agent of change.