Proclaim is a first-in-class anatomically customized and 3D printed oral healthcare product. Generated from patient-specific 3D scans, a bespoke hydraulic device dramatically improves oral health through clinically-validated and precisely calibrated hydraulic cleaning. Integrating design, clinical, fabrication, hydraulic, ergonomic, aesthetic, and geometric constraints in a single adaptive system, Certain Measures collaborated with Fresh Health to develop a software configurator and end-to-end workflow for the mass-customized generation of these intricate hydraulic devices from initial 3D dental scans.
Certain Measures assisted Fresh Health from initial prototype to commercial product, leading to a software patent. This novel configurator realizes the possibility of mass customized health care products, adapting infinite anatomical variability and create an innovative new product class.
My own role was that of lead software architect. I managed a team of 2-4 people, which varied over time. I was on the project from the time the office was hired and wrote the core code that remains used by the client to design mouthpieces. During the first year of the project it was just Andrew and myself on the project, with me doing the bulk of the work and Andrew supervising. During the following years, James Yamada joined as a key contributor for mesh-based-operations, while I remained the key contributor for the remainder of the Nurbs-based workflow. We also were joined by Scott March Smith as QA engineer for several years, followed by Howard Timlin. Binita Gupta provided invaluable feedback on the UI design and documentation.
As the lead software architect, my responsibilities included:
- Working closely with the team at Proclaim Health to write software that reduced design time for mouthpieces by 90%, automating large parts of the workflow through custom-designed algorithms that interfaced with the Rhino3d program through Rhino’s API.
- Was instrumental in the design of the 3d mouthpiece, providing critical design expertise that included all aspects of the software:
- Aesthetics of the printed mouthpiece
- Comfort
- Performance
- Fit of mouthpiece on teeth
- Technician experience when using our software
- User experience when using the mouthpiece
- Mouthpiece Metrics Gathering
- QA/QC processes and standards
- QA tooling, including test infrastructure
- AWS build server maintenance
- Jira project management, bug, feature tracking, sprint planning
- Project planning and management
- Feature identification and prioritization
- Scope planning
- User-side coordination
- Full stack software development (C#, XAML)
- Post-process mouthpiece analysis (Python)
- Long-term R&D
- Coordination with technicians, engineers, R&D, customer experience, product design, product managers at Proclaim Health, including on-site meetings and regular summits
- QA documentation for FDA compliance
- Developed prototype workflows rapidly in Grasshopper for Rhino
- Transitioned prototype workflows to production workflows in a Rhino Plugin
- Worked closely with a separate software company who was tasked with developing the production front-end plugin of the software, while we focused on the back-end algorithms and prototyping the UI.
- In 2023 transitioned over to complete control of the software stack, including the front and backend
- Quickly moved back and forth between rapid-prototyping mode and production-ready-software mode
- Ensured that our work met the highest levels of standards (no unhandled exceptions, responsiveness, )
- Personally wrote 50% of the code in the project and was responsible for the entire stack
- Considered no problem too hard to solve and thrived in project complexities and ambiguities
