Our People

Having started at Getz Healthcares' predecessor Telectronics in 1971, Ian Hellyer has been a valued member of the company for almost 51 years. Now IT Administrator and Facilities Coordinator, Ian has seen the company grow and evolve over the past 50 years alongside the advancements that have shaped today’s healthcare industry. 

Ian’s journey at Getz Healthcare started when he was a school leaver. “Electronics was a hobby,” explains Ian. “I left high school, and actually it was one of my sisters who noticed an advertisement for Telectronics. So, I applied for that, talked about some of the hobbies that I had, and started work.” 

“Now that was a production line. It was a fairly small company back then, so, it was a mix of assembling circuit boards and some metalworking. From there, I moved into quality control, then into the test department, and that was a department of two or three.” 

During his time at Telectronics, Medtel and now Getz Healthcare, Ian has worn many hats within the areas of technology and IT across the business. “A year or two after I started, the business started expanding, more people coming on. Eventually, we moved to much larger premises when the product range increased. At some point, we merged with a sister company which supplied X-ray equipment.”

“I did major installations. For example, I worked in ICU and coronary care at Westmead before the hospital opened. Similarly, at one called Casuarina Hospital, which was a new hospital in Darwin. I worked in their ICU doing all the installation for the equipment that we sold to them. I helped install what is now the GE Lunar machines. Their machines measure bone density. We supplied some nuclear med equipment to Royal Prince Alfred years ago. So, I did some work on that. After service, I moved into IT, but I still do a little bit of this. People occasionally come and just ask questions.”

Ian has seen major technological and logistical changes, both at Getz Healthcare and within the medical industry over the past five decades. “The evolution has been away from component repair to sub-assembly replacement,” explains Ian. “There’s been a change in the manufacturing. In the old days, components were relatively large. You could easily pick them up. Now you need tweezers to pick them up, good eyesight, and quite good skills. All these things, these days, are assembled through robotic systems. In other words, component density has increased a lot. You can put a lot more parts into a given space, as it were.” 

Commenting on the favourite part of his almost 51 years at Getz Healthcare, Ian says, “I like the challenge that spills over to my other interests, science, and engineering. It's not necessarily that I do those things, but I try and understand those things as it helps keep the brain a bit active.” Speaking of the team at Getz Healthcare, Ian says, “I see that they're compassionate about what they do. And willing to listen.” 

How would you describe Getz Healthcare? “The company is not too big not to know just about everyone. In other words, it doesn't have that large corporate structure where you don’t know who other people are.”