He begins his almost year-long fellowship in September, and his study, the detail of which is still being finalised, will cover how hospitals work to reduce clinical performance variations.
Hospitals in the United States gather much information on the performance of their clinicians and Prof Gauld said he would be interested to see if successful hospitals had concerted strategies to improve performance.
He hoped to undertake case studies in a variety of organisations, including some which might be fully private and some notfor-profit, perhaps looking at similar departments.
The study would have relevance to New Zealand where there had been much discussion recently about the quality of hospitals and the need to be able to compare performances so gaps in quality could be addressed.
Prof Gauld, who is associate professor of health policy at the department of preventive and social medicine, understands he is the only South Islander to receive a Harkness fellowship, valued at more than $US100,000 since they were offered for health policy study in 1997.
Only about a dozen are offered throughout the world each year and there is a strong focus on fellows producing publishable work.
During his year, Prof Gauld will be linked to the Institute for Health Policy at Harvard Medical School, along with the Health Policy Institute at Boston University. A tour of the Canadian health system will also be included in the year.
In 2006, Prof Gauld co-authored Dangerous Enthusiasms with Shaun Goldfinch, which took a critical look at the use of information technology in the public sector.