The person with the most useful perspective can change as a medical device moves from an idea to a finished product. Patients can explain what it is like to live with a medical problem, while engineers and manufacturing partners can explain what it takes to build a device and produce it at scale.
Usability testing can show whether people understand how to use a product as intended, and clinical research can reveal whether it delivers the results it was designed to achieve.
Christopher Kiple has worked through each of these stages during his career in medical technology. Today, he is CEO of Solius Labs, which has developed an FDA-cleared, over-the-counter UVB light panel intended to stimulate vitamin D production in adults aged 22 and older.
Before joining Solius, Kiple spent nearly six years leading Ventec Life Systems.
His experience offers a helpful lesson for medical-technology leaders: smart decisions depend on knowing what the team needs to learn next, and who is best equipped to provide the answer.
Rather than treating innovation as the work of a single executive or department, Kiple strives to create an environment where engineers, researchers, clinical experts, product teams and other contributors can challenge assumptions and learn from one another.
In that kind of culture, listening is not a one-time exercise; it becomes part of how the team makes decisions.
Turning Lived Experience Into Better Design
At Ventec, Kiple was part of the original team behind VOCSN, a portable Multi-Function Ventilator that combined five medical devices into one system.
For him, some of the most meaningful insight came not from the technology itself, but from conversations with the patients who depended on medical equipment.
“There was nothing more energizing than listening to patients’ challenges and working with our team to develop real-world solutions to improve lives,” Kiple said.
Patients did not need to know how to engineer a solution. Their value came from understanding and describing the problem in ways the development team could not.
That input helped the team focus on the problems that mattered most to patients. It also pushed engineers to think beyond what a device could do and consider how people would realistically use it in their daily lives.
A product can work exactly as designed and still fall short if it does not address the needs of the person using it. That is why patient input can be most valuable early in the design process, when there is still time to make changes.
For a team, that requires enough curiosity to question the assumptions behind a design and enough openness to change course when the evidence points somewhere else.
The same mindset can be true internally. People working in engineering, research, manufacturing or customer service may notice different challenges from one another because they see the technology from different angles.
When the Problem Changes, So Does the Expert
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ventec faced a challenge it had never encountered at that scale. The company already had the ventilator technology, but now it needed to figure out how to make far more units, far more quickly.
To do that, Ventec turned to General Motors. GM had never built ventilators, but it understood large-scale manufacturing, complex supply chains and high-volume production, which was exactly the kind of expertise Ventec needed at that stage.
Each company brought something different to the partnership and learned from the other along the way. In less than six months, the collaboration increased ventilator production 80-fold.
“I learned an incredible amount from the GM team and was inspired by how people can come together to do the impossible,” Chris Kiple said.
The experience taught him that the right source of expertise can change as the problem changes. At one point, the most useful insight may come from the customer. At another, it may come from a partner with capabilities the team does not have internally.
Recognizing that gap, and knowing where to look for help, can be just as important as solving the technical problem itself.
The Ventec-GM partnership later earned recognition from Fast Company as one of its Top 10 Most Innovative Joint Ventures of 2021, while the Project Management Institute named it among its Most Influential Projects of 2020.
Seeing the Product Through the User’s Eyes
At Solius, Kiple’s team had to make a personalized system simple enough for people to use on their own.
Natural UVB exposure varies with the season, weather, time of day and how much skin is exposed, so Solius is designed to deliver a controlled dose of UVB light indoors.
Before each session, a built-in sensor measures the user’s skin, and the app uses that measurement to calculate an individual dose. Each session lasts about five minutes and the device is meant to be used once per week.
For Solius to work as intended, the person using it has to know where to stand, how to start a session and what the device is telling them. Usability testing shows whether those steps are clear enough to someone who did not help design the product.
In FDA-reviewed usability testing conducted by Eurofins Clinical Research Laboratories, 27 people representing Fitzpatrick skin types I through VI used the Solius dosing system, giving the team a look at how the process works across a range of skin tones.
The device also includes features that guide users through the process. It monitors the user’s distance from the panel and includes a 24-hour lockout to prevent another session from starting too soon.
These features reflect a common challenge of at-home medical technology. Once a product reaches the user, the development team is no longer there to explain how it works. A step that feels intuitive to the people who built the device may be less clear to someone using it for the first time.
Testing with real users gives the design team a chance to identify potential problems and address them earlier in the process.
A team may begin with one assumption about what users will understand or need, then learn through testing that a different issue deserves more attention. Treating that feedback as information rather than criticism gives the team another opportunity to improve the product before it reaches a wider group of users.
Insight to Impact: Bringing the Right Voices Into the Room
Clinical research can help a team determine whether a technology is producing the result it was designed to produce.
In a 2025 randomized controlled trial published in Anticancer Research, Solius was tested against a sham-exposure control group in people with low vitamin D levels. Researchers compare the device’s intended goal with what happened in people who actually used it, which gives the team something concrete to study.
Solius also works with an independent Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, whose members provide input on clinical research, safety, effectiveness and appropriate use. Their input serves a different purpose than user feedback.
Someone using the device can tell the team if the instructions are confusing, if a step is difficult to follow or if something about the device is inconvenient. Researchers and medical experts, on the other hand, can determine whether the results support what the company says the device can do, identify potential safety concerns and point out where more research is needed.
Each group contributes information the others may not be able to provide. That becomes especially important when deciding what a medical-technology company can responsibly say about its product.
Evidence from a trial of the Solius precision sunlight therapy device can support a claim tied to its cleared use, which is stimulating vitamin D production. It does not, by itself, establish that the device can prevent or treat disease, for example. That distinction helps explain why Chris Kiple values bringing different perspectives into the development process. No single group can answer every question a medical technology raises.
“I love working with talented teams to develop new technology and bring to market innovative solutions that improve everyday living,” Kiple said.
For him, innovation is as much a learning process as it is a development process because patients, early users, clinicians, researchers, engineers and business partners all see something different.
Bringing those perspectives together gives a team more opportunities to catch assumptions, refine the technology and make better decisions as the product moves toward real-world use. When listening is at the center of innovation, teams can build medical technology that is more responsive to the people and environments it is ultimately designed to serve.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations. The information presented about UVB light therapy, vitamin D production, medical devices, clinical research, and potential benefits or risks should not be interpreted as a recommendation for any individual. The appropriate use of any medical device depends on the applicable labeling, individual circumstances, and guidance from a qualified healthcare professional. Readers should consult an appropriately licensed healthcare professional regarding their own health needs and before beginning any new treatment or therapy.
