Claude and LLM Training for a MedTech Leadership Team.
Third Coast Dynamics builds AI that reads aortic hemodynamics from the CT and MR scans hospitals already take. 3Pillars runs its commercial back office on Claude. In a one-week sprint, 3Pillars trained the TCD executive leadership team to use Claude directly for their own work: how the models work and where they fail, what Claude, Claude Code, MCP and Agent Skills each do, hands-on practice on each leader’s own task, and the guardrails a regulated MedTech needs.
Company Profile
Third Coast Dynamics (TCD) was founded by physician-scientists at Northwestern University. Its product, TCDflow, derives hemodynamic insight for thoracic aortic disease from standard CT and MR angiography instead of a specialized 4D flow MRI. Four pilot academic medical centers, a Northwestern Medicine partnership, and an FDA pre-submission in October 2025 that confirmed the 510(k) pathway. TCD is STTR-funded and pre-revenue.
3Pillars holds an equity position and runs TCD’s sales and business operations as a fractional team. Most of that back office already runs on Claude: the weekly AI Imaging Intelligence Brief, the investor newsletter skill, a 60-month financial model and the branded decks.
The Challenge
The leadership team saw Claude’s output every week and ran none of the tools. Every new question went through 3Pillars. The founders’ own work, from investor and grant writing to board material, was still done by hand.
TCD is a regulated MedTech company on the FDA 510(k) pathway. Untrained use of a general-purpose model carries specific risks there: protected health information in a prompt, confidential IP in a chat, a marketing claim that outruns the regulatory posture. The team needed the skills and the rules at the same time.
The goal: a leadership team that uses Claude directly for its own work, knows which decisions stay with people, and owns the rules.
The Sprint
Five days, built around one working session. The exercises came from the leaders’ own tasks, collected on the first day.
Readiness and design
Short interviews with each leader: the work they do every week, the tools they already run, where time goes. An inventory of the documents, data and systems Claude can and cannot touch. Guardrails drafted, the agenda set, and each leader asked to bring one real task.
The working session
How the models work and where they fail: context, tokens, hallucination, retrieval, tool use. What Claude, Claude Code, MCP and Agent Skills each do, shown on TCD’s own back office. Then hands-on in the Claude desktop app, each leader on the task they brought, with the guardrails walked through and adopted.
Follow-through
Each leader’s task turned into a repeatable workflow: a prompt, a skill or a scheduled run, set up by 3Pillars and run by the leader. Office hours both days; corrections written back into the prompts and skills.
Governance and handoff
Review with leadership: what now runs on Claude, what stays with people, what changed during the week. Guardrails and skills finalized, and a monthly review put on the calendar so new use cases and FDA or fundraising changes flow through the same check.
The Guardrails
Written on Day 1, adopted on Day 2, finalized on Day 5. Four rules:
- No protected health information in prompts. Patient and pilot-site data never goes into a chat, a skill or a scheduled run.
- IP and confidentiality rules. The Day 1 inventory sets which documents, data and systems Claude can and cannot touch.
- Claims language aligned to the FDA posture. Anything Claude drafts about what TCDflow does or proves is held to the same standard as the regulatory submission.
- Decisions stay with people. Claude drafts, ranks and summarizes. Leaders decide, and 3Pillars reviews anything that reaches investors.
The 3Pillars Solution Deployed
Each leader’s own workflow
The task from the session, now a repeatable prompt, skill or scheduled run the leader owns and runs.
Investor newsletter skill
Leadership submits its section inputs and reviews the regenerated issue each quarter.
60-month financial model
Leadership runs scenarios from the user guide without 3Pillars.
Weekly intelligence brief
Leadership reviews the Claude-generated brief and feeds corrections back into the run.
Branded decks on a skill
Board and investor slides generated from the TCD deck-builder skill that holds the brand rules.
Monthly governance review
New use cases, FDA and fundraising changes, and guardrail updates go through one review owned by the leadership team.
Results
The sprint ran as five working days. Attendee names and the content of each leader’s task are not published. Adoption is reviewed with TCD leadership each month.
Functional Areas Touched
A leadership training reaches every function the leaders touch. Highlighted nodes are where the sprint changed how work gets done or set a rule.