A few months into my final years of college, I was looking for my next big challenge. The last startup I worked at as a founding engineer had just been acquired, and I was itching to build something meaningful again.
That’s when I came across a posting from Ownpath Studios. I applied, interviewed, and to my surprise got an offer letter almost immediately. The role? Lead developer on a healthcare project for Philips.
For an undergrad who’d never even been to Bangalore before, this was huge. Within weeks, I had my tickets booked and was walking into the Philips Innovation Campus in Bangalore for the first time.
Walking into Philips for the First Time
The office was massive. I still remember sitting in a meeting room surrounded by senior developers, UI architects, and even the Director of Philips Innovation. I was the youngest in the room, but I wasn’t just there to observe. I had complete ownership of the project’s codebase.
The product was fascinating, a healthcare app where a user could place their finger on their phone camera and get real time vitals like heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate. Over time, the app could even predict conditions like diabetes, high BP, and sleep apnea based on daily scans.
I was building it solo.
From Design to Code
We used Careplix, a medical SDK, for the finger scan vitals detection. On top of that, I built the app in React with an Express middleware, styled with TailwindCSS.
One of the biggest challenges, and the part I’m most proud of was the UI implementation. Ownpath’s in house designers had crafted an incredibly polished interface in Figma, and it was my job to translate it into pixel perfect code. Every border, shadow, and animation had to match exactly. We went through revision after revision until it was flawless.
And I didn’t just stay in the front end lane. I built core disease prediction APIs from scratch. I pulled from open source medical questionnaires and datasets, compiling them into an inference engine that could provide deeper health predictions the more a user engaged with the app.
Two Hero Moments I’ll Never Forget
There were moments that still feel surreal. Like the first big demo at the Philips office, where I projected the app live on a big screen in front of a room full of senior engineers, architects, and managers, testing scans in real time while explaining how it all worked.
Or the time I was on my way to a critical demo and found a last-minute bug. I ended up fixing code in the back seat of a car, hotspotting from my phone, and pushing the patch minutes before the meeting. The demo went perfectly.
Six Months That Changed Everything
Six months went by in a blur, countless UI updates, testing cycles, and all nighters. Slowly, the app started feeling less like a student project and more like a real, production grade healthcare product.
This was the first time I was working on something that could impact thousands of users. And while the technical skills I learned were invaluable, advanced React patterns, API design, SDK integration, the biggest lesson was how to manage a large scale project entirely on my own.
Looking Back
That Philips project was a turning point for me. It taught me that even as an undergrad I could walk into a room of experts, hold my own, and ship something that truly mattered.
And for that, I’ll always be grateful to the Ownpath Studios team for the opportunity.
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