Product. Engineering. A little play.
I run product and engineering for VR therapy software used in clinics,
and build small things after hours.
At the desk
I build VR therapy software with a game designer's habits.
I'm Director of Product Development & Engineering at CUREOsity GmbH, leading the team that ships VR therapy software on Meta Quest, HTC Vive, and PICO: nine direct reports across development, IT and data, in a team of 14.
I started as a Technical Designer building gamified rehabilitation tools. Today I translate between therapists, engineers and management, and keep releases moving in a domain where every change goes through a quality system.
Right now
readme
CUREOsity · since 2019 · built 2026-10-11
On the keys
On the music stand
From building the experience to leading the people behind it.
Designed and pitched a gamified walking rehabilitation app for the MOTEK Ryzen robot. Built the prototype in Unity with HTC Vive and an overhead projector: scrappy, but it worked.
Built therapy apps and audited how the team actually worked. Redesigned the concepting pipeline and cleaned up the Jira setup (first taste of process improvement).
Turned medical requirements into specs engineers could build. Worked directly with therapists to prototype therapy apps, wrote the specs, and started fixing the production processes that were slowing everyone down.
Ran the team shipping VR therapy software, which grew from 5 to 8 developers. Owned the roadmap and the sprints, and spent a lot of time translating between therapists who wanted features and engineers who wanted clean architecture. CUREO went from fewer than 5 apps to 25+, used in 100+ clinics, over five major releases.
I lead product development and engineering for CUREO, VR therapy software used in 100+ clinics: the roadmap, the releases, and the medical-device paperwork that goes with them. Nine direct reports across development, IT and data, in a team of 14. This year that also means bringing Claude into every team, starting with the data-protection review.
Designed and pitched a gamified walking rehabilitation app for the MOTEK Ryzen robot. Built the prototype in Unity with HTC Vive and an overhead projector: scrappy, but it worked.
In the notebook
Things I built to see whether they would work.
Side project: an iOS and Android app that finds verified disabled parking bays near where you are going, from council open data in cities across Europe, and keeps working with no signal.
Capacitor + React + MapLibrelucsmits.com/parkind ↗Local party game where Muscly Wizards fight to be the last wizard standing.
Unreal Engine 4 / Nintendo Switch / SteamPhysics-based racing game in a custom engine for PS4.
Custom Engine / PlayStation 4A photography site that works like the cork board above the desk: albums pinned up as polaroids, the featured ones also hanging in this room. Built to make publishing a trip's photos a ten-minute job.
Astro SSR · Vercel Blob · PhotoSwipe · a cameraSee the board on the wall ↗photo.lucsmits.dev ↗Before you go
Say hello if any of this sounds like your problem.
I'm open to good conversations, about work or anything else on this page.
luc.smits5@gmail.comCUREOsity GmbH / Head of Software → Director · 2022 - Present
CUREO is VR therapy software for ergo- and physiotherapy. When I took over the team it ran in 2 pilot clinics. It is now used in 100+ clinics, with 25+ therapy apps.
CUREOsity had a prototype that clinicians had validated, but the apps were demos. We had to ship software a therapist could rely on every day, under medical-device rules, while more clinics came on board.
We worked on two tracks: clinical validation with therapy partners, and platform engineering so a new app did not have to start from zero. Three flagship apps came first, then a library that lets a clinic pick apps per patient. Most weeks the job was deciding which therapist requests fit the engineering capacity and the regulatory constraints.
While I was Head of Software the team grew from 5 to 8 developers, designers and QA, and worked with around 40 therapists, clinic administrators and regulatory advisors outside the company. We introduced sprints and documentation standards that fit the medical-device process, and shipped five major releases. Today I have 9 direct reports across development, IT and data, in a team of 14.
CUREOsity GmbH / Director of Product Development & Engineering · 2026 - Present
Bringing Claude into every team at a medical-device company: engineers, data scientists, 3D artists, designers, IT and management. Data protection and governance came first, then training per role, then the tools people already use.
CUREOsity builds regulated medical software, so patient data, medical-device documentation and source code each have rules about where they may go. The job is to get Claude into every department without breaking those rules: the data-protection officer first, then the quality management system and the security policy, then seats.
This work is in progress. More detail will follow as the rollout develops.
CUREOsity GmbH / Head of Software · 2022 - 2026
How the development team learned to plan and deliver as CUREO grew from fewer than 5 apps to 25+, and the team from 5 to 8 developers.
As CUREO went from 2 pilot clinics to 100+, deadlines started slipping and nobody outside the team could see why. Priorities were unclear and a lot of knowledge lived only in people's heads.
I sat down with the team and mapped where work got stuck. Then we set up sprints, retrospectives and daily standups in Jira around those points, and started writing down what people knew. I pitched it to the team as more autonomy for them, which is what got them on board.
Deadlines became predictable enough for the business to commit to larger contracts. People outside the team could follow progress in Jira instead of interrupting engineers. The team grew from 5 to 8 developers without slowing down.
Multi-platform / Switch, PS4, Android, Windows, VR
I have shipped software on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Android, Windows and VR headsets (Meta Quest, PICO and HTC Vive, for CUREO). Each platform has its own rules, and console releases have to pass certification before they go out.
Every platform has its own certification requirements, technical limits and submission timelines. A failed certification means another round of fixes and another wait before release.
I read the platform requirements before the build started, so the engineering worked within them from the first sprint. Submission checklists caught problems before a build went to the platform holder, and builds for each platform ran side by side.
Software shipped on all five platforms, and the console builds went through platform certification.
Side project / Capacitor + React + MapLibre
An app for drivers with a disabled parking permit: search where you are going and see the nearest disabled bays, how old each record is, and whether other drivers have checked it, then hand the bay to your maps app. Built on evenings and weekends because the data existed but nobody had made it usable.
Disabled parking bays are published by councils as open data, each city in its own format, licence and level of care, and outside those cities only volunteers on OpenStreetMap have mapped them. Drivers who depend on a bay often circle a block several times or give up. The information problem is small; the daily impact on the people affected is not.
Trust the official record first and say how old it is. A pipeline pulls council records city by city, repairs and de-duplicates them, and keeps each city's licence and credit with its data; OpenStreetMap bays fill the gaps, marked as such and never mixed in. Drivers can say a bay is still there or gone, or add a missing one, without an account. The app is a Capacitor and React shell around a MapLibre map with downloadable city map packs, so it works in a car park with no signal, and it is designed for its audience: large legible type, every state in words as well as colour, and usable at 200% text.
Council records for 72 cities in 14 countries, nine of them bundled in the app, with OpenStreetMap bays everywhere else. Now preparing the App Store and Google Play release.
Side project / Unreal Engine 4 / Nintendo Switch / Steam
A couch party game: a handful of overgrown wizards on one screen, spells that push and pull, and the last one standing wins. Built in Unreal Engine 4 for Nintendo Switch and Steam.
Open the project ↗Side project / Custom Engine / PlayStation 4
A racing game where the physics is the point: cars with real weight and grip, built on a custom engine and brought to PlayStation 4.
Open the project ↗Side project / Astro SSR · Vercel Blob · PhotoSwipe · a camera
Photographs from trips and quiet weekends, published on a small self-built site. Uploads resize in the browser and land straight in blob storage, so a new album goes live without a deploy.
Open the project ↗
