Clinical Product Isn't a Sign-Off Step. It's a Design Input.

Three clinical leaders from Numan, Flo Health and Doctor Care Anywhere on why safety belongs in the build, not the sign-off.

This is Clinical Product Thinking 🧠, a weekly newsletter featuring practical tips, frameworks and strategies from the frontlines of clinical product.

Welcome, friends, this is issue No. 045 of Clinical Product Thinking. This week: highlights from our first panel, on where clinical judgement really belongs in a healthtech org.

A few weeks ago I co-hosted the first panel in a 3-part series organised with Dani. The full video is below. But if you only have a few minutes, your tl;dr is below:

I was joined by three leaders building clinical product at scale:

• Dr Anushka Mehrotra — Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Care Anywhere

• Dr Yath Prem — Medical Advisor, Flo Health

• Dani Brightman — Clinical Director, Numan

Three very different companies yet one shared conviction: clinical product isn’t a department you consult. It’s a discipline you build in.

Let’s dive in.

1. Clinical risk hides in the places non-clinicians don’t think to look

The panel circled back to this a number of times. The dangerous decisions can be the small product choices, the colour ranges on a blood pressure reading, a portal update that looks unchanged to the clinician on the other side, that quietly carry real clinical weight.

Anushka gave an example from Doctor Care Anywhere: an update had been made to the patient facing app, but the clinician interface looked the same. Everything was actually safe, but because it didn’t look like the clinicians expected they were worried the update hadn’t been made. The lesson: end-to-end mapping has to include every user’s perspective, not just the patient’s.

Dani put the principle plainly:

“In health tech, a product decision is a clinical decision when that product is shaping patient care.”
— Danielle Brightman, Numan

The trap: clinical risk doesn’t announce itself.

2. Involve safety early, or pay for it later

There’s a myth that clinical involvement slows teams down. The panel didn’t agree. Bring clinical judgement in late and you force everyone back to the drawing board, which is slower, not faster.

Dani built Numan’s clinical product function from zero to the largest team in the UK. Her take on accountability:

“If you can’t veto, then you can’t have the accountability, because that’s completely unfair. For you to hold the real weight of clinical safety, you also need to be able to say no at times, and know you’ve got backing for that.”
— Danielle Brightman, Numan

If you’re going to hold someone responsible for safety, they need the power to block. Anything less is a set-up.

3. Integrated, not consulted

Yath made the case for what 'integrated' actually means in practice. At Flo, medical advisors sit inside cross-functional squads with a dedicated PM, design, content and engineering, meeting almost daily.

“For Flo, it’s never a question of ‘should we listen to the medical advisor?’ It’s how do we work with the advisor from the beginning. It’s never a case of ‘shall we check with the medical advisor if this is okay’, the medical advisor is always in the conversation.”
— Dr Yath Prem, Flo Health

That’s the difference between clinical input as a gate and clinical input as a default.

4. How you communicate risk matters as much as spotting it

A practical takeaway came from Dani on communicating risk so that people listen:

“We’d say ‘this process means this patient might get a double dose,’ and leave it there, because we all knew the implications. But a non-clinical person didn’t really understand how bad that was. You need to take it further: this patient comes to moderate harm, hospitalisation, that’s irreversible. Then they’re like, ‘okay, that actually sounds quite serious.’”
— Dani Brightman, Numan

And pair it with the commercial reality: the litigation exposure, the payout costs, the drop-off. Do the research first so the risk is easy to prioritise.

When the answer is “too risky,” don’t stop at no. Anushka’s rule is pragmatic option building:

“There might be an option that’s too risky, but what’s the alternative? Is there something else that can be done that isn’t as risky, that helps to control some of that risk but still partially achieves what’s trying to be done?”
— Dr Anushka Mehrotra, Doctor Care Anywhere

The takeaways

The evening’s themes:

1. Integrated, not consulted. This phrase came up again and again.

2. The constant balance of clinical and commercial. Healthcare companies are still businesses. Both pillars have to be right.

3. Option building, not just blocking. “No” is rarely the end of the conversation.

4. A shared language. Different disciplines working together in high-risk, fast-paced environments all benefit when we speak each other’s vernacular.

Which is really just one idea, said a few different ways:

Clinical review is not a sign-off step. It is a design input.

🎥 Watch the full panel below. Anushka, Yath, Dani and I go far deeper than I’ve captured here, on reporting lines, scaling safely, and what founders get wrong before they scale.

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Hiring spotlight 🚀

🇬🇧 Doccla are hiring a Head of Clinical Innovation. The role will be crucial in translating Doccla's clinical model into safe, evidence-based, and commercially impactful products and pathways. 👉 Apply here.

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Join the next clinical product panel 🎤

📆 14th July, 7pm, online

The next clinical product panel is on 14th July and we’ll be covering the “clinical product gap” or why healthtech needs a new kind of product leader. 👉 Sign up here.

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That’s all for this week. See you next time! 👋

🤝 Work with me | 📅 Attend an event | ✍️ Send a message

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Written by Dr Louise Rix, Head of Clinical Product, doctor and ex-VC. Passionate about all things healthcare, healthtech and clinical product (…obviously). Based in London. You can find me on LinkedIn.

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