Heraeus_GB15_Magazin_EN_RZ_29_04_lowRes - … WE SEE OPPORTUNITIES!

23 HERAEUS | MAGAZINE 2015 | THE TINKERER …WE SEE OPPORTUNITIES! Colin Boucher, Product Engineer at Heraeus Medical Components (HMC), leaves the easy stuff to others. He and his team thrive on solving complex challenges, knowing that finding that one elusive solution could make a huge impact in patient care and treatment outcomes. W hen they reach their teen years, many students are still unsure of their career goals. But for Colin Boucher, he vividly remembers the moment it all crystallized and came into focus for him. In Minnesota, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Region is home to a thriving medical device market. “The industry is everywhere in the Twin Cities,” he said. “You can’t drive down a major highway and not see a campus for one of the major medical device companies. And everyone knows some- body who works at one of them.” So did Colin. While in high school, his great uncle, a long- time employee at a medical device company, took him on a tour of the laboratories where devices were tested. “I even got to touch a beating swine heart in one of the labs. It is still one of the coolest things I have ever done in my whole life,” he remarked. It was the time in that laboratory that Boucher’s career plans came into focus, giving him a purpose and direction for his life, from visitor to a vocation. “Looking back, it was the pivotal moment that drew me toward medical device engineering.” Catheters are fascinating In the seven years that he’s been in the field, Boucher readily admits that medical device engineering is a profession dominated by challenges. “You’re in a highly regulated industry. The patient’s well-being is at stake. There’s an urgency to make things work more precisely and perfectly.” But Colin and the colleagues at Heraeus Medical Components live by guiding principles that are vital in the pursuit of the next important breakthrough or solution to a problem. “Innovation is as much about attitude and mindset as the idea itself,” he says. “Where others may see obstacles, we see opportunities.” After his university studies were completed, Boucher began his career at a medical device company, where he specialized in the development of stents that surgeons implanted in legs to improve blood flow. He studied the complex catheters that surgeons used to deliver the stents.

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