Profile: Adam Bothwell

Meet Adam Bothwell. Chief Technology Officer at ClearMark. 

Name: Adam Bothwell

Job: Chief Technology Officer at ClearMark QMS

City: Cincinnati

Hometown: Cincinnati 

Q: What do you do at ClearMark?
ClearMark is an electronic quality management system for medical technology companies which expedites device development while ensuring compliance with FDA regulations.

Our cloud based platform eases the burden of documentation inherent in traditional paper systems, allowing companies to work interactively and efficiently even when remote. With rigorous regulatory requirements, paper documentation methods have become overly complex taking attention away from what the company is trying to do: build a safe, compliant and state of the art medical device.

With ClearMark, organizations can leverage our tailored eQMS specific to their needs without needing to divert resources from their core objective.

Q: What’s a problem that you are working to solve? 
Ease of use and simplicity are at the core of our development approach at ClearMark. At ClearMark QMS, we are disrupting the eQMS industry by providing users with a crafted experience specifically for medical devices which eliminates much of the noise, overhead and otherwise unnecessary tasks that often come with industry agnostic QMS systems.  

As CTO, my priority has always been to produce great quality software without the extra bloat we commonly see in generic quality management systems. Leveraging my experience developing high volume, multi tenant, cloud based software systems, I not only get to help build an industry disrupting state of the art SaaS platform, I get to work with some incredible startups and small companies who are producing incredible medical technologies with potential to shape the world for generations. This is fun!

Q: What’s a lesson you’ve learned that has helped shaped your work? 
That’s a good one, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is managing conflicting opinions around a technology direction - meaning, which language, platform, pattern, etc. do we build our foundation on? How do we staff our project team, how do we support the product after its launch? 

With so much noise out there, choosing your initial technology path can be a very difficult task with enormous potential repercussions for the business. Learning how to manage various functional teams with differing technology backgrounds and opinions to come together and make an informed decision that benefits the entire organization has been incredibly valuable. By enhancing communication and valuing each employee's perspective we improve, grow and operate better.

I find that for me, being confident in my area of expertise, bringing other experts into the room and listening to the teams that will be receiving and implementing the direction yields the best results. My goal is to help our team “cross over” into bigger picture thinking - without them, there is no product. 

Q: What’s a trend in technology or innovation that you believe doesn’t get enough attention? 
The trend of the newest, latest, greatest thing has created more technical debt, bloat and saturation at levels I don’t think most of us could predict. I’m all for new ideas - but sometimes it’s best to build your system on a tried and tested framework instead of something unproven.

I’ve seen many organizations pay exorbitant amounts of money for a custom application only to discover maintaining it is next to impossible because the talent pool of available engineers specific to that rare and or infant tech stack is less than desirable. As engineers, we must do a better job of selecting the right technology for the job - our curiosity sometimes leads us on roads we may not necessarily want to travel when the stakes are high. 

Q: What’s one moonshot idea that could help make Ohio a world leader in technology and innovation? 
Connect the major metropolitan areas, literally! Cincinnati, West Chester, Mason, Loveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland, Toledo, Youngstown with some form of high speed transportation.

What could we as Ohioans come up with if it was an easy hop to an incubator in Youngstown giving a presentation on a new concept when we live down in Cincinnati?

Reducing our commutes from long hours to minutes could dramatically increase our collaboration with other like minded people. We have plenty of meetups throughout the state, it would be great to see a rotation of events in each one of these incubating cities filled with talent, and an effective way to get there! 

Q: What's your favorite place in Ohio? 
As a kid when I was working on some challenging software projects I’d take a drive to clear my head. One of my favorite and quick routes growing up on the east side of Cincinnati was taking 52 along the river towards New Richmond and beyond, without a GPS or map of course because they were way too expensive then.

Even today, when I find myself unable to think clearly and need a break, oftentimes I hop in the car with the windows down, rock and roll on high volume and go for a drive. And every once in a while, I find myself cruising down 52 - with a solution already figured out and a smile on my face just like I did as a kid. 

Q: What makes Ohio special to you?  
My entire life is here. I’ve traveled to a lot of places in Ohio, the United States and abroad. And yes some of those places are incredible - but they aren’t home. Who doesn’t like a dozen different weather seasons in a year?

Ohio has been home forever, and it's hard to imagine life anywhere else although the Bengals occasionally make it hard to stay! But hey, if Mr. Joe Burrow is really the new Tiger King, then you better believe I’m here to stay. Who Dey!

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.