Meet Ashley S. Moy of Cast21 in River West

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ashley. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I do my best work when I am passionate about a problem I’m solving. I wanted to work on a project that was impactful and challenging so I could be passionate about my work during what would have been my last year of school at the University of Illinois. My classmate and now co-founder and I jumped on an opportunity to make Cast21 an independent passion-project for school. At the end of the semester, we entered a business competition on a whim and won! The experience was inspiring. After a series of other business competitions, we applied to and got accepted into the country’s #1 medical device accelerator: Zeroto510. We packed up our bags and moved to Memphis to partake in the program and officially launch our business.

After the program, we moved back to Urbana-Champaign to run the company and for me to work on my degree part-time. Now, Chicago is our home. We have a couple of locations around the city, and we are loving the culture and environment it provides for building and growing our business.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
My favorite challenge that I face every day and likely will for the lifetime of our company is team building. People are at the core of everything we do. I’m always concerned with how to build the best team, provide stimulating challenges, and show everyone how much I appreciate them.

Please tell us about Cast21.
Cast21 designs waterproof exoskeletons, such as casts, braces, and splints, for broken bones. We are the only ones creating products that are molded to each patient’s unique body type in under 3 minutes without any hardware – no 3D printers, no heating elements, and no water. Patients can still choose their favorite color for the device and have their friends and family sign it.

We always feel great when patients reach back to us and let us know how much they appreciated our new product, the OSTEON DEFENDER. We believe it is possible to enjoy your healing experience, and we love when our patients prove us right.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I don’t regret any of the decisions I’ve made with Cast21, but in the future, I will make sure the right people are in the right job positions sooner. I’ve recently been given a set of tools to help make personnel decisions, and I’m eager to put them into practice.

Where how do you see your industry changing in the future?
There are a lot of big question marks in healthcare right now. In general, I expect to see patients take much more ownership of their healthcare decisions and data. Patients will start to be seen more as consumers with options instead of pawns that don’t make treatment decisions for themselves.