Held: the CTO role in practice
Held makes blood test results understandable. Users get a broad blood panel through Synlab, then receive their results in a personal profile with plain-language explanations per value, trend tracking over time, and optional DNA and lifestyle guidance.
The situation. The founder had a clear product vision and a front-end in motion. The technical foundation was holding the project back: spread across Supabase and several third-party services, and stalled by open questions about data tenancy, where AI may process health data, and GDPR. The kind of blockers that don’t go away on their own, and that a founder shouldn’t have to solve alone.
What we did. We took on the entire backend and infrastructure:
- Settled where sensitive health data is processed, stored and encrypted, with a privacy-first model where user data can only be decrypted on the user’s own device
- Brought in our own engine, Blood Insight, already tested with real users, as the backbone instead of starting from scratch
- Built the data pipeline and AI integration behind Held’s blood value analysis and visualisation
- Consolidated the stack into one AWS setup: lower cost, more reliable, and a foundation that scales
- Removed the compliance and security questions that had kept the project on ice
The result. Held is live. The founder focuses on product, growth and the front-end; the technical side is handled, production-ready and built to carry the product forward.
Track record
15+ years as product owner, Scrum Master, agile coach and transformation lead, for clients including Proximus, Belfius, CureVac, Ghent University, the Flemish Agency for Roads and Traffic and the Belgian Prime Minister’s Chancellery.
Built and shipped
We don’t just advise; we build and run our own products, with AI as a real teammate.
InsightLab: a privacy-first product studio, turning complex personal data into something people can actually understand. Home of Blood Insight.
SmartCVWriter: an AI-ready CV builder that captures your full professional story, so AI and ATS filters can actually see it.
TeamPlayLab: story-driven play and experiential learning for teams, bringing games like Blood on the Clocktower into real team development.
The Handheld Gazette: an editorial site reviewing new commercial games for classic handhelds.
scrumdark.com: a grimdark archive of Agile truths, rituals and delivery scars.
Open source
Sigil: schema enforcement and CRUD integrity for Obsidian vaults, keeping structured data clean for humans and AI agents alike. Published on PyPI.
Character MCP: an MCP server that gives AI agents a stable, well-defined character, so personality doesn’t drift from session to session.
tinyCount: a minimal page-hit counter for static sites. One Lambda, one DynamoDB table, no tracking scripts, no third parties.
Earlier tools: ChronoGit (time logs from Git history), CardCuts (print-ready cards from PDFs), eve (handheld savegame backups), DGTL Chrome Launcher, MONIchrome and tacsign (terminal dashboards).