Arthronica · CTO and co-founder
Arthronica
Arthronica was a digital health start-up that researched whether machine-learning models could use an ordinary smartphone or laptop camera to measure joint range of motion in people with arthritis. As co-founder and CTO, I owned the technical vision, product and regulatory roadmap, designed the stack (Django REST Framework, Angular, Ionic) and hired the team. Development stopped at the R&D stage because of capital constraints.
- Client
- Arthronica
- Role
- CTO and co-founder
- Year
- 2020 to 2021
- Tech
- Django REST Framework, Angular, Ionic, Figma, BrowserStack, AWS, GitHub, Jira
The challenge
Arthritis has a huge human cost, and the economic cost is just as large. The peer-reviewed figures put arthritis-attributable medical spending at $157 billion a year, rising to $326 billion once lost earnings are added, and the loss to pain and lower productivity at 1.9% of GDP in a single year. There is no cure, and treatment can only slow the disease, so catching it early and tracking it continuously matters.
Arthronica set out to improve arthritis care using computer vision and technology people already own. The research question was whether machine-learning models could use an ordinary smartphone or laptop camera to measure a joint's range of motion, and give clinical teams objective, automated inputs for diagnosis.
What I did
As co-founder and Chief Technology Officer I owned the technical vision, the product and the regulatory roadmap.
- Product strategy: led the product end to end and set the blueprint for an innovative user experience.
- Technology and team: designed the technology stack and hired the team to deliver the proof of concept and MVP, using Django REST Framework, Angular, Ionic, Figma and BrowserStack, among others.
- Research and development: directed the early R&D, including the conceptual design of the machine-learning models.
- Regulation: worked through the compliance frameworks a medical diagnostic platform needs, treating regulation as part of the design rather than an afterthought.
- Planning: set the team's OKRs and the roadmap for the MVP and the machine-learning features.
The role was highly cross-functional, bridging engineering with product management, implementation strategy and UX design.
The outcome
Because of capital constraints, development stopped during the R&D stage. The models and software architecture were never fully realised, commercialised or turned into protected intellectual property, and the company was wound down and dissolved.
