About Me

AI Lead, Product Owner & SaMD Engineer driving healthcare innovation

I'm Arno Vanneste — a Product Owner, AI Lead, and Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) engineer with a strong foundation in artificial intelligence and software engineering. I bridge the gap between product strategy and technical delivery, driving the development of AI-powered medical devices that transform patient care. My focus is on building scalable, compliant solutions that drive meaningful impact in clinical practice.

Background

My career has evolved from hands-on software engineering to product strategy and technical delivery. I've built enterprise platforms, contributed to technical teams, and now drive product strategy for AI-powered medical devices. This progression has given me deep insights into how to translate complex technical capabilities into valuable, user-centric products that meet both market needs and regulatory requirements.

What Drives Me

I'm passionate about creating products that solve real problems and drive measurable impact. My goal is to lead product strategy for innovative solutions, combining strategic thinking with deep technical expertise. I thrive on defining product vision, designing systems that scale from concept to deployment, and ensuring technical excellence while maintaining the highest standards of quality and compliance.

Arno Vanneste

Professional Journey

2025 - Present

AI Strategy Lead | Product Owner | SaMD Software Engineer

Gynaia

Women's HealthGynecological DiagnosticsClinical Decision SupportTraining & CertificationQuality AssessmentMedical ImagingHealthcare Technology

Gynaia is a joint spin-off between KU Leuven and UZ Leuven, developing AI-powered solutions for women's health diagnostics. We combine clinical decision support tools, comprehensive training programs, and quality assessment systems to improve diagnostic accuracy in gynecological care. Our platform helps healthcare professionals make better diagnostic decisions, reduces diagnostic delays, and brings specialized expertise to broader clinical settings.

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2025 - Present

AI Strategy Lead | Product Owner | SaMD Software Engineer

Gynaia

Product StrategyAI/MLSaMDTechnical DeliveryProduct ManagementClinical Decision SupportMedical ImagingPrototypingMachine LearningCloud Infrastructure

Driving product strategy and technical delivery across multiple clinical decision support products. As Product Owner and AI Lead, I oversee the development of medical device software from strategy to prototype to deployment, combining strategic product vision with hands-on technical implementation. This includes building scalable infrastructure, validating new clinical models, and ensuring our products meet technical requirements while supporting healthcare professionals.

2022 - 2025

Software engineer

AE

Azure

Delivering technical solutions from complex problems across various client projects.

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2024 - 2025

Software engineer

GO!

ReactTypeScriptNext.jsTailwindCSSMicroservices.NETAzureEvent-driven

Developing a platform that provides educators with easy access to high-quality digital learning tools. The project focuses on creating a robust, centralised, user-friendly system to streamline the discovery, management and integration of educational content across various learning management systems.

2022 - 2024

Software engineer

Mediahuis

TerraformGitlabReactTypeScriptMicroservices.NETAzureEvent-driven

Developed an enterpise level CIAM platform. My work focused on enabling secure, scalable cross brand authentication experiences, working on both frontend and backend solutions, and managing cloud infrastructure and deployment processes to ensure everything runs smoothly and scales effectively. Took ownership of the data migration process, seamlessly migrating over 5 million user accounts across multiple countries.

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2021 - 2022

PhD Researcher

Augment Group, KU Leuven

Research on mixed-initiative explanation methods: the next generation of interactive machine learning steered with rich feedback of non-expert users. The overall objective of this research was to enable non-expert users to interact with ML models as a basis to improve the accuracy of such models and to increase user trust.

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Designing Visual Explanations and Learner Controls to Engage Adolescents in AI-Supported Exercise Selection

Publication, LAK 2025

Iteratively designed and implemented a control mechanism that enables learners to steer the difficulty of AI-compiled exercise series before practice, while interactively analysing their control's impact in a 'what-if' visualisation.

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2020 - 2022

Associate

Leuven AI Forum

AI EthicsTEDxLAIF

Organised different projects such as TED Events & AI Ethics workshops to connect students, academics and industry experts on important topics related to AI.

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Educational Journey

2020 - 2021

MSc Artificial Intelligence

KU Leuven

Magna Cum Laude

Focused on machine learning, data analysis, and the theoretical foundations of AI algorithms. Developed expertise in advanced programming and applications across domains such as information retrieval, bioinformatics, and computer vision.

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2020 - 2021

Thesis

LIRIS Research group

AIMachine learningPyTorchscikit-learnWeights & BiasesNeural networksITECausal machine learning

Thesis as internship at LIRIS Research group. Developed interpretable prediction methods for individual treatment estimation in healthcare, focusing on causal inference using machine learning.

2018 - 2020

MSc Electronics and ICT Engineering Technology

KU Leuven

Cum Laude

Specialized in Internet Computing, with a focus on distributed systems, software architecture, and advanced digital technologies. Developed expertise in designing scalable and efficient software solutions, cloud computing, and networked applications.

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2019 - 2020

Thesis

WOW Solutions

Thesis as internship at WOW-mobility. Designed and developed a self-service kiosk for a bike sharing system using user-centered design approaches.

2015 - 2018

BSc Industrial Sciences: Electronics & ICT

KU Leuven

Focused on embedded systems, networking, and software development, with an emphasis on innovation, sustainability, and real-world solutions.

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Certifications

  • Azure Developer Associate

    Microsoft

  • Vue, Complete Guide

    Udemy

Languages

  • English

    Professional proficiency

  • French

    Basic

  • Dutch

    Native