This is Clinical Product Thinking 🧠, your weekly newsletter featuring practical tips, frameworks and strategies from the frontlines of clinical product.
Good afternoon friends, this is issue No. 017. This week, we’re keeping things intentionally light with a look back over Clinical Product Thinking content in 2025.
It’s 21 December, and if you’re anything like me, your brain is half in “wrap things up” mode and half in “please let me lie down” mode.
So rather than introducing something new, I wanted to share what resonated most in Clinical Product Thinking over the last few months and what I think that reveals about the direction of clinical product.
Clinical Product Thinking turns 4 (months)
Clinical Product Thinking 🧠 launched in mid-August 2025. We’re now 17 issues in, with 500+ subscribers and over 15,000 views.
Looking back across that time, a few themes clearly stand out.
The topics you’ve engaged with most:
Introduction to regulation for Clinical Product Managers
Clinical product as an emerging discipline
How to get into clinical product and what “good” looks like in practice
Taken together, these themes aren’t random. They point to a need for orientation: Clinical Product Managers are defining their role in an increasingly complex landscape, while healthtech organisations are trying to make sense of a function that’s still taking shape.
⭐️ Most read: Intro to regulatory
Post: Software as a Medical Device Regulation — 101 for CPMs
I very nearly didn’t publish an introduction to software as a medical device because I worried it might feel too basic. In reality, the fundamentals are exactly what people are looking for.
Here are the practical takeaways from the post you can apply today:
⚙️ Practical takeaways for new CPMs
Bookmark the MHRA’s guidance. You’ll use it often to check whether a feature tips your product into medical device territory.
Clarify your intended use early. This single statement drives risk class, evidence requirements and regulatory pathway.
Know your class. If you’re Class IIa or higher, expect deeper scrutiny, clinical evaluation and an external conformity assessment.
Understand who regulates you. If you operate in both the UK and EU, you’ll need to align with both UK MDR and EU MDR frameworks.
Familiarise yourself with key standards. ISO 13485 (quality), ISO 14971 (risk) and IEC 62304 (software lifecycle) shape how products are designed, tested and documented.
And most of all… don’t fear all the letters and numbers. You’re not meant to master everything overnight, just know what they govern and who in your team owns them.
👍 Most liked: Clinical product as a discipline
Post: Welcome to Clinical Product Thinking
This one means a lot to me because it’s the reason this Substack exists!
The central premise is simple:
We need to stop duct-taping clinical onto product development.
Clinical product isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s not “a clinician who ended up in product”.
It’s an emerging discipline that sits at the intersection of:
patient safety
evidence & outcomes
real-world usability
regulation
and delivery at scale
When that discipline isn’t present, or isn’t properly resourced, teams pay for it later: in trust, adoption, safety workarounds and expensive rebuilds.
🙇♀️ Most engagement: How to get into clinical product
Post: How to Land Your First Clinical Product Role with Danielle Brightman of Numan
This post performs consistently because it answers a core question:
“Am I thinking about this role in the right way?”
Based on conversations with leaders hiring CPMs, the message was clear:
It’s not about having the perfect background or ticking every credential.
It’s about:
curiosity over compliance
systems thinking over feature delivery
translating clinical risk into product decisions
and catching problems before they become incidents
In other words, CPMs are trusted not because they know everything but because they know how to think, who to involve and where risk hides.
A quiet pattern I’m noticing
When you put these posts side by side, a pattern starts to emerge. There’s demand for shared language and decision-making frameworks that help teams do clinical product work when the stakes are high and the timelines are short.
Look out for more of this in 2026.
Happy holidays, all 🎄
Coffee & Chat ☕️
Trialling a new format in Jan: a relaxed, 50-minute online chat for people working in and around clinical product. The first session is 21 January at 4pm. Spaces are limited 👉 Sign up here.
Save the Date 📆
29 January — the first in-person Clinical Product Thinking event of the new year. We’ll be kicking things off with a panel event on how to get into clinical product with some very special guests. CPT subscribers will receive early access 👀
Hiring Spotlight 🚀
Raj Kohli, co-founder and CEO of HealthTech-1, is hiring a Clinical Product Manager. I caught up with Raj about the role and the team’s direction. HealthTech-1 is doing incredible work in primary care, and this position would suit a mid-level CPM with a strong regulatory mindset and Clinical Safety Officer (CSO) experience. 👉 Apply here.
That’s all for this week. See you next time! 👋
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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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