DOTmed News spoke with Jim Carr about his new position as of director of service and international operations at Advanced Ultrasound Electronics.

DMN: How would you describe your new job?
JC: I am responsible for managing and developing our field service capabilities, quality management system, service training offerings and leading the expansion of our business into the international market.

DMN: How did you get started in the industry?
JC: Growing up, I was always interested in the medical field and thought I would become a doctor. In high school, my best friend and I got interested in electronics and, using the radio amateur's handbook as our guide, built some projects in his basement. After my father died suddenly when I was 17 leaving my mother and 4 younger siblings essentially broke, I scrapped my plans for medical school. After a couple of years in various jobs that bored me to death within weeks, I longed to go back to school and get a more challenging job. One morning I had an epiphany; I would go to electronic engineering school and get into medical electronics. With the constant research going on in both fields, I figured that would lead me into a field that was growing in size and technical complexity. When I got close to graduation, I was hired by a company called Metrix, Inc. in Denver that was the first diagnostic ultrasound company in the USA that had commercially available systems. At that time, the only application for diagnostic ultrasound was echoencephalography, with an A-mode display and a single element transducer. I worked there for 7 years. During that time I developed the first QA tests for transducers, looking at sensitivity and pulse width, and helped develop one of the first B-mode scanners.

DMN: How does your background play a direct role in what you bring to this new position?
JC: AUE has been growing at a steady rate for a few years, and there are several opportunities that are causing that growth to accelerate. We are still relatively small, so I am able to contribute in several areas using my extensive experience in quality, regulatory, service, training and international markets.

DMN: What are your goals in your new position?
JC: My goals are: To establish the preeminent ultrasound service training school at AUE's great new facility, to grow our field service coverage in the USA, to lead the development and certification of an ISO 13485 quality system, and to expand our parts and training business into international markets.

DMN: What excites you most about the industry these days?
JC: The ultrasound industry has excited me for my entire career, due to the technological developments in electronics and the materials science of transducers. There have been a number of consolidations and mergers over the past few years that have created some exciting opportunities for companies that are decisive, nimble and customer service oriented. And after a few years of almost total domination by the "big 3" (in the USA, anyway) there are quite a few new companies and new systems creating competition and making it more interesting.

DMN: Do you have any interesting hobbies?
JC: I have 3 Dachshunds, a loving wife of 36 years, a couple of websites I maintain for her, and I play the sax when I get a chance.