Physicians
Been thinking about that new product for a while? Let us help and bring a real device to clinic ASAP.
Medical product design and manufacturing · Greenville, SC
Impactful details get missed. Let's design a solution together.
I design solutions to non-surgical medical issues using human-centered design and Jobs-to-be-Done frameworks. We can take an idea to prototype to production, iteratively, quickly, and safely.
- ME Mechanical engineering, Vanderbilt
- R&D Five and a half years in product development at Procter & Gamble
- MFG 3D printing expertise, rapid prototyping, design for manufacturing
FIG. 01
DRAG TO ROTATE
Loading model
Part6.0 mm external fixator clip
DimensionsAbout 36 x 20 x 8 mm
MaterialPETG
StatusIn production
Who this is for
You've seen a problem looking for a solution but aren't sure how to make a working device?
We complement your experience with development skills and technologies.
Nurses
Obsessed with patient care and equipment that doesn't quite cut it? Let's build something together.
PAs & NPs
You see it all and often have the insights most impactful to a patient's experience. We would love to partner.
Device reps
Ready to sell your own products? Bring your clinicians solutions to problems they bring up.
Work together
Option A
Hourly product development
You own the idea and IP but need engineering hours to move it forward.
- CAD, design revisions, and physical MVPs
- Test design
- Consumer feedback loops
- Requirements, design documentation, and a regulatory starting point
After our initial call, you get a written scope and estimate before we begin. We contract for phased work with clear success criteria.
Option B
Partnership
You're a clinician or sales professional with the problem and the access, and you don't have time to build a company around it.
You bring
- The problem and the clinical insight
- Patients or users willing to test
- Sales channels and buyer relationships
- Distribution
I run
- Design and development
- Manufacturing and quality
- Labeling, claims, and compliance
- Day-to-day operations
We agree the structure case by case, based on what each of us can contribute and wants.
Process
Typical design process
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1Start
Problem call
A 30-minute call about the problem and your goals.
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2Empathize
Human understanding
We get first-hand knowledge of the problem through site visits, photos, videos, and first-hand accounts.
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3Define
What is success?
We define and align on success criteria for the project. This is how we know when the problem is solved.
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4Ideate
What can we do?
We use divergent thinking and research to look at as many possible solutions as we can.
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5Prototype & test
Build it
We create the first prototypes and do user and lab testing to refine the product.
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6Go-to-market
Delivery
We finalize the design and deliver the product, files, and compliance records.
Case studies
Parts I've made and the data behind them.
Each project shows the problem, what I built, and the evidence. Prototypes are marked as prototypes.
- The original clips slid off and clashed with the fixator colors the children chose.
- Four prototypes in about 10 hours. The client chose the live hinge clip, and I made a matching clip for the 1.8 mm wire.
- Every lot ships bagged with a batch record, functional QC, and a printed label.
85%Stronger hold than the original clips
15Surgical cases
8Working days from brief to trial
FIG. 026.0 MM ROD AND 1.8 MM WIRE
What I built
- The software reads the scan's vertebra labels, finds the center of each vertebral body, and runs a hidden 8 mm connector bar through them. The spinal canal stays open.
- It cuts the spine into the fewest pieces that fit the print bed and tilts each piece to keep it short. Every joint gets a 4 mm peg and a 4.5 mm socket.
- An accuracy check measures every surface point of the print file against the CT segmentation and maps the error by vertebra.
558mmFull spine, C1 to L5, printed in 3 sections over about 45 hours
0.42mmMedian surface deviation of the print file from the CT segmentation
93.4%Of surface points within 1.0 mm
Pass criteria: median at or below 0.5 mm and 95th percentile at or below 1.25 mm. The smoothed mesh I printed passed with a 0.42 mm median and a 1.06 mm 95th percentile. These numbers compare the print file to the segmentation, not the physical print. The scan resolution (0.70 x 0.70 x 1.25 mm voxels) limits accuracy to about ±1 mm. The model was made with real patients' CT scans from VerSe, a dataset that is publicly available online for research. It is for education and demonstration and is not for diagnosis.
FIG. 03C1 TO L5, 558 MM
Loading model
FIG. 04DEVIATION HEAT MAP
What I did
- Interviewed care staff at Greenville residential care and nursing facilities about how they check thickened liquids, how often, and what goes wrong when they don't.
- Built an instrumented test stand. You press a button, a geared motor pulls a syringe plunger at a steady speed, and a 10 kg load cell measures the force needed to draw the liquid into the tube. From that force and the tube geometry, I calculated a viscosity close enough to place the liquid in an IDDSI level.
- Designed and printed a self-contained version with a sample cup, a power switch, and a light for each IDDSI level from 0 (thin) to 4 (extremely thick). New requirements came in after this version, so I went back to the test stand.
- Modeled the business as a reusable device plus a single-use straw consumable, sold to long-term care facilities.
Outcome: I stopped the project. Facility buyers showed little interest, and training staff in senior care to use the device raised new problems. Since then I start every project by asking who pays and who has to change how they work.
FIG. 05TEST STAND
FIG. 06TEST STAND, CAD
FIG. 07SELF-CONTAINED VERSION
What I did
- Scored consumer segments with a weighted model, coded 332 competitor reviews by failure mode and purchase driver, and bought and tested four competing products.
- Took the design through 9 prototype iterations in Fusion 360 to a three-size line (Puppy, Standard, and Yard) that shares one Capture Core. I chose HDPE over cedar for the exterior and wrote a fastener spec for creep and thermal expansion.
- Wrote the build instructions, the Capture Core making procedure, and a costed BOM workbook. The numbers showed a 50.8% margin before labor when sold direct and $3.80 a unit at wholesale, which changed the channel plan.
- Ran 11 go-to-market tests for about $930: paid and organic social, Instagram outreach, an event booth, a 5-week in-store placement, and apartment outreach. People at the event engaged at 87.5%, against 18.4% for paid social traffic.
9Prototype iterations
11Go-to-market tests with recorded results
332Competitor reviews coded
Outcome: I paused the company in September 2026. The build documents, BOMs, and test data are archived for a restart.
FIG. 08STANDARD UNIT, HOW IT WORKS
About
Emory Eastin
I'm a mechanical engineer in Greenville, South Carolina, and I've practiced product design for eight years, mostly in Class I medical device research at P&G.
At Vanderbilt, I was a TA for several engineering design courses and ran the makerspace at the Wond'ry, the university's entrepreneurship and engineering center. Most of my time there went to 3D printers, laser cutters, and students trying to turn a concept into a working prototype, including some of my own ideas.
My first medical device job was an R&D internship at Nuvectra, a neurostimulation company. I designed new road show materials our sales teams used to demonstrate the surgery in doctors' offices, mapped 200 QMS SOPs into a single view of the quality system, and led the root cause analysis on the human interface control system, which saved $24k per week.
After graduating, I spent five and a half years at Procter & Gamble working on Always Discreet, a brand for women managing bladder leaks. The products are FDA Class I exempt medical devices in the US, with other designations in Japan and China, so the work sat somewhere between consumer goods and medical products.
My focus was primarily on product research: what does the consumer want, need, and want to hear? I took part in more than 300 one-on-one interviews and designed consumer studies in which thousands of participants completed tens of thousands of surveys. Much of my research turned into new product lines and sustaining innovation:
- Always Discreet Night, which outperformed its forecast 3x
- Always Discreet Essentials, a Sam's Club joint venture that delivers Always Discreet performance at a private-label price
- End-to-end development of new products for the European and Japanese markets
Not every launch went well. One drew a wave of negative reviews, so I led a multifunctional team to find the root cause and intervene where necessary. I used AI sentiment analysis on 30,000 comments, and the product and marketing fixes that followed cut negative feedback 60% from peak in three months. We then used what we learned to revamp the launch playbook for the Baby, Fem, and Family categories.
I also led claims and compliance for the brand, from TV copy to packaging. Every claim had to hold up legally, drive consumer, retailer, and business value, and be executed correctly by our commercial teams. We had a 100% success rate defending tier one claims.
In 2025, I left to build my own products. Since then I've taken a pet product (Potty Box) from concept to launch, developed a device that measures liquid viscosity for dysphagia patients, and set up a boutique product design firm where I design and develop products for medical professionals.
My wife and I are originally from the Upstate and moved back in late 2022. We recently got married, bought a home in Greenville, and have our dog, Teddy, to keep us on our toes.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I kept this long to show the breadth of my experience in design, compliance, and user satisfaction. If you're seeing a problem in your specialty that people have learned to work around, I'd like to hear about it. I take on hourly product design work, and I'm open to a long-term partnership when we're a good fit.
Start a conversation
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Or email contact@eastinsolutions.com
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