Brief
Access to quality eye care is something most people in the western world take for granted. For millions of others, it simply doesn’t exist. Ocuwell came to npd with a mission: create an affordable, portable ophthalmic topography device that could reach patients in underserved communities worldwide. The technology existed – advanced, precise, clinically validated – but it lived inside large, expensive equipment that couldn’t travel, couldn’t scale, and couldn’t reach the people who needed it most. The challenge was to take a working advanced prototype and transform it into something that could be mass-produced, mass-deployed, and used by clinicians anywhere in the world.
Process
This is exactly the kind of project we exist to work on. Ocuwell brought us their prototype alongside full 2D and 3D data. We reviewed everything internally and quickly identified the areas that needed attention before this device could move into production: mechanical design, electronics, hygiene, and user experience.
On the electronics side, the PCB was generating excessive heat. We worked through three iterations to resolve it – adjusting tracks, swapping components, and navigating component obsolescence mid-development when a key part disappeared from supply chains entirely. These are the real challenges of product development that rarely get talked about.
Mechanically, we focused on how the device comes apart, goes together, and feels in the hand. Getting the magnet specification right alone took multiple rounds of testing. We also identified a significant hygiene issue: the part of the device that contacts a patient’s body wasn’t removable. For a medical tool used across multiple patients in clinical practice, that wasn’t acceptable. We redesigned it as a disposable, replaceable component.
A new 3D printing process, recommended by one of the medical professionals guiding the project, gave us a finish quality that communicates precision and reliability (exactly what clinicians need to trust in a device). The result is something that fits in a pocket, attaches to a slit lamp, or works as a standalone portable unit.
Result
Ocuwell now has pre-production samples going into user trials, the last stage before mass manufacture. What was once complex, immovable, and out of reach financially has become something a clinician can carry to a patient in any part of the world. A product that provides the diagnostic information of a full topography suite, at a fraction of the cost, with the durability and hygiene standards clinical practice demands. That’s a produict that deserves to exist in our eyes!
