CIVCO grows as it focuses on safety of images taken inside the body

Sonography, the use of high-energy sound waves to capture images inside of the body, has matured over the past 40 years to become a common medical procedure.

Coralville-based CIVCO Medical Solutions has grown with the technology.

“When I started, our primary call points were OB/GYN and radiology,” Robin Therme said. “If you had an ultrasound, you went to the radiology department.

“Now, ultrasound is everywhere, in every department, and they have their own machines. There’s so much portable ultrasound that’s used bedside.”

Therme, CIVCO’s president, was sitting in a conference room at the company’s production facility in Kalona, where about 100 people work. Early next year, they’ll move to a 63,000-square-foot plant in Coralville, at 750 Lois Lane, part of a $15 million project to consolidate operations.

Global demand for CIVCO products – about half of the company’s business is international – drove the move. The current 10,000-square-foot plant was built in 1999.

“We’re out of space, and we’re on top of each other,” Therme said. “I was really anxious to get back together. Today, we’re doing events at both places, and I can’t be at both places, and I like to be involved with everybody. We’ve got engineers up there (in Coralville), and engineers down here.”

The Coralville project also includes 33,000 square feet of office space, a training center, lab and product demo rooms, and a gym for CIVCO’s 180 Iowa-based employees. Another 30 employees work remotely from locations in the United States, and about 400 are at an assembly plant in Juarez, Mexico.

Once the move to the new facility is completed, the CIVCO plant in Kalona will be sold to Appliance Barn, Therme said, noting that company teams “worked hard” to find a buyer for the plant in the Washington County city of 2,600.

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Company’s growth

Producing a useful sonogram requires precise location of the needle or catheter that delivers sound waves to the organ, blood vessels or developing fetus that’s being examined.

Company founder Victor Wedel, who also started the University of Iowa’s sonography program, devised a guide to keep the transducer properly located, allowing the generation of real-time, three-dimensional images.

“He had the idea of an attachment to the equipment to keep the needle or catheter within the imaging plane,” Therme said. “It’s a very thin slice (of tissue) that you see, and you basically build the slices together to get a three-dimensional view. It’s hard to keep the needle in that plane, and that was his original idea.”

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CIVCO quickly expanded its product line to protective devices that prevent infection and cross-contamination.

“If you puncture somebody, you really need to have a protective sleeve over that, because you can’t sterilize ultrasound probes,” Therme said. “We disinfect them, but for the most part they can’t be sterilized.”

CIVCO also produces disinfecting equipment for transducers, the disinfectant chemicals and trays to securely transport devices that have been cleaned.

“If you have any of those procedures, it’s required by law that those transducers are high-level disinfected,” Therme said. “You also have to keep records of the dates, the person that’s used it and the solution they used. It keeps track of that information.”

Still, about 80 percent of the Kalona plant’s output is single-use disposable needle guides and transducer covers.

“We’ve really built those product lines out, and through acquisition we have acquired a product line for men’s health. It was originally designed for treatment of cancer, for placing radioactive seeds through a grid system,” Therme said. “Now, it’s also used for diagnostic as well as other things.”

The company’s teams are now focused on making its image-guided procedures safer through the use of technology.

“Why not use technology to know you’re being accurate, why not use technology to make it safer?” Therme said.

Therme said CIVCO will continue looking for ways to expand its portfolio, while also exploring “adjacencies” -- product lines the company can buy or develop “to grow our business.”

Communication

Therme, 56, joined CIVCO in 1991, when the company had 21 employees at a smaller building in downtown Kalona. Therme’s UI degree in communications attracted Wedel, who wanted to publish a magazine for users of the company’s products.

“That’s why I was hired,” she recalled. “What quickly happened was, the lady taking orders was taking maternity leave and asked me if I’d do that. I did our computer system backup, I managed inventory. I wore a lot of hats, and I quickly navigated to working with our equipment manufacturers.”

Communication is critical to development of new CIVCO products that support equipment makers’ latest advances.

“All of the design work we did was with the equipment manufacturers, to enable our product to be used with their system,” Therme said. “I did a lot of that product management and started building our international business.”

Wedel retired in 1999 and now lives in Arizona. Therme became the company’s president in 2017. After its sale to a privately held parent company, CIVCO is now owned by Roper Technologies, a publicly listed Florida company with holdings in diverse industries.

International

The Kalona plant ships pallet loads of sonographic equipment and supplies each day to customers around the world.

About half of CIVCO’s business is international, and its products must meet standards in every market in addition to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s certification.

“On our labels we have a lot of different languages, a lot of different marks,” Therme said. “The EU (European Union) is big for us. A few years ago, they said we’d have to meet new requirements, so we’ve been spending the past three years preparing for that.

“The Japanese have their own requirements, China, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil. We’re in over 100 countries. There’s a lot of moving parts and a lot to stay on top of.”

Those rules mean the new CIVCO plant must be certified before routine production starts next year.

“We can’t just pick up equipment and move it,” Therme said. “We have to be audited. We can’t actually produce product there until we get our certificate for Europe. It’s going to be a few months’ evolution to get that moved.”

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