Shape the Future of Clinical Product Thinking 💁♀️
How you can help shape what comes next and what the community is finding most useful
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. 033 of Clinical Product Thinking. This week is something a little different.
Over the past few months, Clinical Product Thinking has grown a lot faster than expected. So many new faces, reading and sharing every week.
As it grows, it feels more and more like we are collectively defining what clinical product is, what great looks like, how people break into the profession and how to build safer, better healthcare.
So as such I would love your help. I’ve put together a very short survey to better understand what the community is looking for.
As a thank you, everyone who completes it can choose one of three practical resources:
✅ How to Break into Clinical Product Panel Event - Recording (previously only available to paid subscribers)
✅ Commercial Cheatsheet for CPMs - The top 50 commercial terms that every clinical product manager needs to know
✅ Clinical Product & Chat event - a free 45-minute group call to discuss your clinical product questions and challenges
👉 Complete the survey here
In addition to the above you will also receive my eternal gratitude! 🙏
What the Community Are Reading
If you’re new here (and many of you are), welcome.
Over the past few months, a few themes have come up again and again in Clinical Product Thinking. These are the posts that readers have shared most, replied to most and told me helped them make sense of their own role.
If you’re building, hiring into or trying to break into clinical product, these are probably the best place to start.
1. How to Break into Clinical Product
By far the most popular theme has been how to break into clinical product.
Posts like:
How to Land Your First Clinical Product Role with Danielle Brightman of Numan
Want to Be a Clinical Product Manager? Here’s Exactly What Employers Are Looking For
…were very well received.
And I think they resonated because many people are asking themselves the same question:
“Am I actually qualified to do this?”
The answer is probably more than you think.
The message from Danielle Brightman, who leads one of the largest clinical product teams in the UK, was that employers are not primarily hiring for credentials.
They are hiring for a way of thinking.
The traits that came up again and again were:
Curiosity
Systems thinking
The ability to spot risk
Thinking in journeys and workflows, not isolated features
Being able to translate between clinical and product language
As Dani put it:
“Experience matters, but mindset wins.”
2. Clinical Product Is Becoming a Real Profession
Another thing readers seem to be finding most useful is clarity that what clinical product is and is not: clearer expectations, career ladders and responsibilities.
One of the most-read posts was analysis of all recent clinical product job descriptions.
The biggest themes:
Clinical backgrounds are increasingly expected
Governance and safety are now core parts of the role
Employers want people who think in systems and outcomes, not features
CPMs are increasingly expected to bridge product, operations, regulation and clinical care
Healthcare products are not judged only by typical product metrics like clicks, activation or retention.
Increasingly, they are judged by:
Clinical outcomes
Pathway performance
Safety
Whether they work in the real world
Job descriptions are calling for people who can deliver the above.
3. Who Owns What
Another of the most popular posts tackled a question every scaling healthtech team eventually faces:
Who is actually owning what?
Most people understand the role of a Product Manager. Fewer understand what a Clinical Director owns. And almost no one seems entirely clear where the Clinical Product Manager fits.
The simple framework that resonated most was:
PM owns what to build
CPM owns how to build it safely
Clinical Director owns clinical integrity and sign-off
The reason this matters is that role confusion does not just create frustration.
It creates risk.
Early on, “everyone does everything” can feel fast and scrappy.
Later, it becomes chaos disguised as collaboration.
One idea that seemed to strike a chord: phantom accountability.
Often CPMs are being held responsible for governance, safety or clinical decisions without the authority or support to do so properly. That is a governance problem.
4. Y’all Love Regulation
Some of the other best-performing posts have been about regulation, SaMD and AI.
I think it is because many people know these things matter, but do not know where to start.
The most-read post on SaMD boiled the whole thing down to four questions:
What is the intended use?
What class of device is it?
Who regulates it?
Which standards apply?
The key message:
Safety, governance and evidence are not separate from product.
They are the product.
Most Importantly: Thank You
Thank you again for being part of Clinical Product Thinking.
I’m excited to help build the future of clinical product together.
Louise
Join Us at HLTH Europe 🇪🇺
Danielle Brightman and I are running a panel event on clinical product with two incredible guest speakers. If you don’t know about HLTH, it’s the health tech conference you absolutely cannot miss.
👉 Register your interest for the panel here.
🎟️ Get your HLTH ticket here. (Use code: HE26PP_CPT250 for €250 off your ticket!)
That’s the public post for this week. See you next time! 👋
🤝 Work with me | 📅 Attend an event | | ✍️ Send a message
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.
Made with 💜 for better, safer HealthTech.
Join the Next Clinical Product Coffee & Chat ☕️
Trialling a new format over the next 3 months, a monthly small group chat where we discuss hot topics and your most pressing questions.
