Going behind-the-scenes in a MedTech startup for a 6-month internship to create lasting impact

While most of his friends were hanging out with friends or playing video games, then 14-year-old Wong Jae Hann spent his time helping his mother care for his wheelchair-bound father and grandmother.  

Tasks like lifting them in and out of a wheelchair were especially taxing for him and his mum – both of whom are slightly built.  

“That was one of the motivations for me to look into engineering, and specifically, the health tech space,” said Jae Hann. “I felt that something can be done to help improve the quality of life for caregivers.”   

Jae Hann is in his fourth year at SUTD, Majoring in Engineering Product Development, specialising in the Robotics track.

His first foray into experimenting with assistive devices came during a group project for an Engineering Design Innovation module in the second year of his Engineering Product Development degree at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). 

The theme for the project was travel, and as his group was brainstorming, they landed on a common issue most of them had faced before – wheelchair-to-car and wheelchair-to-bed transfers.  

LAIR was born.  

Their final product, dubbed LAIR, short for “Lifting Chair”, was a device that propped patients up in their wheelchair seats. It worked by partially lifting patients up in their seats which reduced the angle at which a caregiver had to lean forward to lift patients out of their wheelchairs. In turn, this reduced the strain on the caregiver’s back and the risk of them falling over or onto the patient.  

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While LAIR was designed for a school project, Jae Hann and his team felt that it had the potential to hit the markets and drew up plans to put it on the market that same year. However, the endeavour was short-lived. 

They soon discovered how difficult it was to juggle studies and work, and upon further research, they realised that a similar product already existed in the market and struggled to differentiate their product.

“It taught me a lot, besides the engineering part of things, about managing people and a business,” he said. “When you see something, you developed improve the lives of someone else, you share in their joy.”
 

Fastforward to his final year at SUTD, Jae Hann was, like his other peers, trying to decide how to spend his summer holidays. Unlike most of his peers however, he had left the decision to the last minute.  

“Initially it was not my intention to do another internship,” said Jae Hann, who was toying with the idea of doing a stint as a Research Assistant. “But after getting some advice from my career counsellor, he suggested that I just try out an internship to gain some industry exposure.” 

While searching for one, he eventually came across SGInnovate’s Talent Programme, Summation.  

The webpage had Castomize – a MedTech startup developing orthopaedic casts for patients using 4D printing – listed as one of the startups available for internship.  

Its casts respond to stimuli like temperature, making them more flexible and customisable, as well as thinner, lighter and more durable than the typical plaster cast. 

Jae Hann wearing one of Castomizes’ 4D printed casts. 

“I felt that Castomize was somewhere I could use what I had learnt during my startup days, while also learning more from what they're doing in the Medtech and 3D printing space,” he recounted. More than that, it was a chance to create a positive impact on the lives of others. 

He applied and was selected to do a 6-month internship with the startup.  

Chief of his duties as a robotics and automation engineering intern was to automate the production of casts. However, the startup’s manufacturing process had to be modified first to prepare it for automation. At the time, its 3D printer was not producing consistent cast prints, so Jae Hann had to fix that before automation could proceed.  

Through several hardware and software modifications, he stabilised the printers’ base plates to ensure an even weight distribution so that the casts’ foundational layer could be well-formed. 

“That was probably one of the biggest problems the company was facing back then. So when my proposal was implemented, it felt like I actually managed to do something that had a direct contribution to the company,” he said. 

Once the big fixes had been implemented, his role evolved into that of a manufacturing engineer, working on expediting production and maintaining the printers. 

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His time at Castomize even took him to China, where he helped the company set up a small-scale manufacturing facility.  

“I got the experience of creating the whole process flow, user manual and a troubleshooting guide for the engineers in China so that they could operate the production process independently.” 

Jae Hann also gained valuable experience from Castomize’s unique 4D printing approach – “One of the interesting experiences that I had was working with IDEX printers with dual extruders. I’ve only been printing with a single material so far, so having this new printer and extra extruder to think about definitely was an interesting experience in terms of the calibration and the choice of materials,” he said. 

Additionally, the ex-startup owner picked up a few lessons on what it takes to run one. “The startup life requires a lot from you because you have so many things to think about – it’s not just about the product, but when you turn it into a business, how you want to market it to people, your target market, analysing your competitors and even managing your finances,” he said, adding that passion is key to keep startups afloat.  

Young and entrepreneurial talent like Jae Hann is rare, said Abel Teo, co-founder of Castomize. But working with platforms such as SGInnovate’s talent programmes has helped. “It has exposed us to a lot of talent with the foundational skills in 3D design and modelling,” he said, adding that such talent is easier to train. 

At startups like Castomize where teams are small, proactive people are valued. “As a small company, it is difficult to have structured training. So we look for people with the initiative to learn and who are open-minded,” Abel explained. 

Jae Hann with the team from Castomize. Abel is second from the right. 

Jae Hann fitted the bill. “He would take the initiative to suggest upgrades and go the extra mile to research topics and see how to further improve our processes,” said Abel. This entrepreneurial spirit, developed from his own startup experience and personal interest in MedTech, made Jae Hann a valuable employee. 

With the lessons from his LAIR startup and his stint at Castomize under his belt, Jae Hann is poised for his next adventure, this time, into the world of software. As for whether or not he’d dip his toes into entrepreneurship again? He's not ruled it out entirely.  

“It requires a lot of commitment, and you need a good team because if your team is not very cooperative, it's a bit hard to make things move. But I wouldn't want to entirely close the door on exploring startups again.” 

Find out more about how you can get involved with a startup like Castomize through our talent programmes here.