Synesthesia CRNA partnered with FortyAU, a member of the Anthropic Claude Partner Network, to build a HIPAA- and FERPA-compliant anesthesia education platform using Claude — enabling two non-technical clinician co-founders to author and ship code directly into production, cutting weeks out of every feature cycle and scaling to nine paying nursing schools without hiring an in-house engineering team.
Background
Synesthesia CRNA is the modern platform for anesthesia education: mobile-facing software for nurse anesthesia students and preceptors, backed by administrative tools for program faculty. It was founded by Zach Stewart, a practicing CRNA (certified registered nurse anesthetist), and Matthew Harmon, a nurse anesthesia educator and former assistant program director.
Neither founder has a software engineering background. From the start, they needed a technical partner who could not only build the platform, but help them find a way to keep building it as the business grew.
The Problem
Two problems, at two different points, shaped the engagement with FortyAU.
Nurse anesthesia programs are accredited by the Council on Accreditation, which requires detailed case logs and clinical evaluations from preceptors. Before Synesthesia existed, programs relied on a patchwork of legacy tools that made this process slow and unreliable. Students could spend 45 minutes logging just eight cases, and preceptor evaluation return rates hovered around 30%, leaving programs with incomplete data and real risk to their accreditation. Having experienced that problem firsthand as clinicians, Zach and Matthew set out to build a single, purpose-built platform for the space, but as non-engineers, they needed an experienced U.S.-based team to build it with them.
Once that platform existed, a second problem emerged. Every new feature or fix meant a traditional development cycle: the founders would describe what they needed, wait on an outsourced or offshore team to build it, and lose 5–7 days per request before they could even see and react to a working version. As a sales-and-service organization with no in-house technical staff, Synesthesia had no way to close that loop themselves, and relying on someone else was time-consuming and expensive.
Implementation
Zach and Matthew brought their idea to FortyAU in 2023, and the two teams spent several months in design and discovery before FortyAU designed and built the initial HIPAA/FERPA-compliant platform from scratch, shipping an MVP in early 2024 that solved the first problem: giving programs a purpose-built way to collect case logs and preceptor evaluations. At the time, the build relied on FortyAU’s engineers using early AI tools to scaffold backend models and controllers; agentic coding wasn’t yet part of the workflow.
That changed in 2025, addressing the second problem.
Instead of routing every request through FortyAU’s development queue, Zach and Matthew began using Claude (Opus, and later Claude Fable) to write and submit merge requests directly into the live codebase themselves, with FortyAU’s engineers reviewing and guiding the output before it shipped to production.
Claude also reshaped the day-to-day pace of the relationship: rather than waiting on a build to be demoed back to them, the founders learned from FortyAU how to use Claude in a way where they could preview features in their own local environment before FortyAU’s engineers got involved at all.
Outcome
Across both phases of the engagement, Synesthesia has seen concrete results:
- Evaluation return rate went up from ~30% to ~80%, once the purpose-built platform replaced the patchwork of legacy tools programs relied on before.
- Same-day to one-business-day turnaround on critical fixes, replacing the multi-day, offshore-outsourced support cycles the platform relied on previously.
- 5–7 days eliminated from every feature request cycle, since founders can now build and preview changes locally before involving engineering at all.
- A second product shipped — an anesthesia scheduling platform for operating rooms — built by the founders using Claude without adding engineering headcount.
- Growth pulled forward by years: expansion into adjacent programs, like nurse practitioner education, is now targeted for 2027, a milestone the founders had previously assumed was a decade away.
The founders don’t plan to build an in-house engineering team. Instead, they intend to keep scaling with Claude handling more of the build, while FortyAU stays on for review, architecture, and compliance.
“We would be well into seven figures and not be anywhere close to where we are now without FortyAU’s guidance and without Claude and these new tools.”
— Matthew Harmon, Co-Founder, Synesthesia CRNA