Collin O’Connor proudly works at WR Medical Electronics as the Engineering Manager.
At WR Medical, I now oversee the engineering operations related to design, development, and improvement of existing medical devices as well as new devices and internal processes. This includes working with our highly skilled team of engineers in software, hardware, and electrical design to achieve our company and customer’s goals for testing in sensory and autonomic equipment.
Additionally, I oversee the company data networks and small datacenter, managing its security, web services, and supportive infrastructure for WR Medical.
Initially, my career started as a software developer for desktop medical applications and embedded firmware for medical devices. This included tasks from design stages for new devices, significant overhaul of legacy devices including bringing code up to modern standards and platform translation, as well as maintenance of existing legacy codebases.
In particular, my primary focus was the maintenance and improvement of the software and firmware used both in the medical devices sold by WR Medical Electronics as well as the computer based charting and reporting software. Generally this involved improving usability and capabilities of both software and firmware from user perspective. Sometimes this involved custom modifications for specific clients or larger private research events. Projects also involved on the firmware level the updating and migrating of code from older style 8-bit systems including Motorola C6800, Intel 8080 series, and 8051 class microprocessors to newer hardware centered around 32-bit ARM based platforms. This involved designing of initial specifications for hardware component selection, integration of the parts, design of drivers and interfaces, writing both software requirements specifications as well as design specifications, and all the way out to testing.
In addition to coding, my work has included working to solve customer issues directly. This is done both via phone and sometimes on-site. I have also spent time training hospital staff and technicians in the use of equipment, travelling to assist them during the initial training on their equipment and follow-up support. To further this, I spend time working on updating and maintaining user documentation in addition to any developer and internal-centric documentation to better enable our customers to work with their patients.