INTERVIEW-New GE Health Care CEO: Growing foreign sales key

* Growth outside U.S. key for new GE Health Care CEO * Unit remains open to acquisitions

By Scott Malone

BOSTON, July 17 (Reuters) - Growing General Electric Co's (GE.N) health care operation outside the United States will be a focus of the unit's new chief, he said on Thursday.

"Everyone talks about the U.S. industry. I'm just as interested to see where we can take this in China and India and Russia and all of those markets," said John Dineen, who was named CEO of GE's $17 billion health care arm on Thursday. "That's a great growth opportunity."

Dineen noted in an interview that in his last posting, as head of the transportation arm of the second-largest U.S. company by market capitalization, he had grown the backlog of orders from 10 percent outside North America to 50 percent.

Today, about half GE Health Care's revenue comes from outside the United States.

GE's U.K.-based health care arm makes high-tech imaging devices like X-ray and CT-scan machines which doctors use to peer inside patients' bodies without cutting them open. One of its challenges in growing its presence in emerging markets is coming up with lower-cost versions of these devices.

Dineen takes the reins from Joe Hogan, who is leaving GE to take the top job at Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB (ABBN.VX).

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