Meet the ZeroSole team
A better way to approach everyday offloading
Practising podiatrist Heather Smart and David Barton created ZeroSole, bringing together clinical experience and product development to address a gap they saw in everyday practice.
Heather Smart
Co-Founder, Director & HCPC Registered Podiatrist
Heather's experience as a practising podiatrist has been central to ZeroSole's development. Her clinical experience helped identify the problems the product was designed to address and continues to inform how it’s developed and used in practice.
David Barton
Co-Founder & Director
With a degree in podiatry, David brings a clinical background alongside his work in product development. He was closely involved in turning the original ZeroSole concept into a working product, developing and testing different silicone designs and helping shape the removable-cell system used today.
From an idea to a working product
The idea for ZeroSole came from a gap Heather and David kept seeing in everyday practice between temporary padding and more complex orthotic solutions.
They wanted to create a first-line insole therapy that sat perfectly in that middle ground.
Turning that idea into a working product took years of experimentation. They invested in CAD software and a 3D printer, while David developed and tested different silicone designs at home.
The breakthrough came when they successfully created a prototype with silicone hexagonal cells that could be mechanically removed by hand. This became the foundation of the modular system used in ZeroSole today.
The design continued to evolve through development and independent testing, but the core idea remained the same: an insole that could be adapted to the individual pressure point, that's long-lasting and durable to treat and prevent chronic conditions.
Our values
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Evidence-Based Innovation
Our approach is grounded in research, testing and clinical experience. Pressure-mapping research found up to a 28% reduction in peak plantar pressure when ZeroSole was customised for targeted offloading.
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Self Empowerment
We give clinicians a straightforward way to provide targeted offloading, while giving patients a practical option when temporary padding isn't enough.
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Resourceful Ingenuity
ZeroSole was developed to solve a genuine clinical problem with a simple, practical approach to customising an insole around an individual pressure point.
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Compassionate Precision
Our clinical evaluation found immediate pain reduction for painful plantar lesions, alongside clinically significant lesion-size reduction over six weeks following debridement.
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Exceptional by Design
Every part of ZeroSole has a purpose, from the removable cells to the transfer sticker used during fitting. The design makes targeted offloading practical, straightforward and adaptable.
