Chief Product Officer — Virtual-Care Division

The mandate

A virtual-care division has expanded through separate payer and product teams. Each programme has a roadmap, yet responsibility becomes unclear when a patient crosses triage, consultation, diagnostics and follow-up. The board has created a new Chief Product Officer seat to own complete care products rather than a collection of features and contracts.

Approximately 1,250 employees and material partners include clinicians, care coordinators, product managers, designers, engineers, data specialists and service teams across Australia and connected markets. The CPO owns product strategy, portfolio, discovery, lifecycle, product operations and adoption, reporting to the Group Chief Executive or nominated sponsor. Clinical governance retains protocol and professional authority.

The product unit will be a care episode with a defined population, entry, clinical objective, escalation, completion and payer promise. The CPO will establish accountable product leaders across the whole journey. A consultation interface alone cannot be called the product when necessary follow-up sits elsewhere.

Quality recovery begins with failure demand. Repeated contacts, abandoned journeys, missed investigations and uncertain escalation reveal where product boundaries fail. Teams will examine patient cases and frontline work, not rely only on conversion funnels. The roadmap will prioritise recurrence and consequence before cosmetic enhancement.

Clinical rules require lifecycle governance. Triage, eligibility, prescribing, monitoring and escalation content must have authorised owners, version, evidence and review dates. Product teams should know which changes require clinical validation and what monitoring follows release. Temporary risk controls need expiry and formal replacement.

Patient consent and expectation are part of design. The product must state what virtual care can and cannot provide, how information is used and when another service is needed. Users should not have to infer whether a message is monitored clinically. Accessibility and language alternatives need equivalent safe pathways.

Capacity will shape promises. Product managers will understand clinician skill, roster, diagnostic and follow-up constraints. New demand should not launch until the operating model can absorb it. The CPO will use staged release, wait-list controls or restricted populations where evidence and capability remain limited.

Lifecycle economics will include acquisition, clinical delivery, technology, support, repeat contact, diagnostics and unresolved action. Payer revenue or subscription count alone can hide loss-making complexity. The CPO will work with finance to decide whether a product should scale, redesign, partner, reprice or retire.

Portfolio discipline is overdue. Programmes built for one payer contain reusable capability but also bespoke workflow. The CPO will identify common platform components while preserving necessary clinical variation. Custom requests need incremental economics, architecture fit and a future disposition; they cannot accumulate invisibly.

Product discovery will include patients and carers without treating preference as clinical evidence. Research must involve relevant populations, consent and privacy. The team will test comprehension and real behaviour. A high satisfaction score from completed users does not explain why others could not enter or continue.

Releases affecting care will have readiness, training, monitoring, rollback and patient-communication plans. Engineering completion is one gate. Operations and clinical owners must accept the changed workflow. The CPO will stop launches when monitoring cannot detect likely failure.

Outcome measurement will connect product and clinical measures. Appropriate access, time to disposition, continuity, unresolved action and patient effort should sit beside adoption and contribution. Outcome claims need qualified interpretation and sufficient follow-up. Teams cannot redefine success after results are known.

Product talent will be reorganised around journeys. Leaders need clinical curiosity, operational depth and commercial judgement. The CPO will create advancement for specialist product craft and address product owners who manage stakeholder requests without making decisions.

What you will own

• Virtual-care product strategy and portfolio.
• End-to-end episode ownership and product operating model.
• Clinical-rule and release governance.
• Capacity-aware discovery, adoption and accessibility.
• Lifecycle economics and retirement decisions.
• Common platform versus payer customisation.
• Product outcomes, learning and quality recovery.
• Product talent and succession.

The first 12 months

Within 45 days, map priority products from entry to safe completion, identify unowned steps and pause roadmap work that lacks clinical or operating evidence. Establish accountable product leaders.

By month six, relaunch selected journeys with governed rules, capacity gates and outcome monitoring. Decide the future of duplicated or uneconomic programmes.

At twelve months, reduce repeat contact caused by product failure by 35%, cut unresolved follow-up actions by 60% and improve safe episode completion by 20%. Retire or consolidate at least 25% of duplicated roadmap work, with every active care product carrying a clinical owner, complete lifecycle P&L and monitored accessibility standard.

What the sponsor will examine

• Products defined through safe episode completion.
• Roadmaps driven by failure consequence and evidence.
• Clinical rules versioned and monitored.
• Demand constrained to deliverable capacity.
• Custom payer work carrying explicit economics.
• Product leaders deciding across functional boundaries.

The person

You bring 22–28 years in product leadership, including CPO or major portfolio authority in virtual care, healthcare technology or another regulated service. You have owned clinical or high-consequence products beyond the interface, with direct accountability for operations, adoption and economics.

Australian healthcare exposure, product-quality recovery and experience retiring established products are important. This permanent role is onsite in Sydney because product leaders must work beside clinical and service operations.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is AUD 440,000–590,000 plus annual incentive and long-term participation linked to clinical-quality recovery, episode completion, portfolio economics, accessibility and product leadership. The permanent onsite Sydney appointment reports to the Group Chief Executive or nominated executive-committee sponsor. The new seat is being filled urgently.

Confidentiality

The division, patients, payers, clinical pathways, products, incidents, systems and economic evidence are confidential. Further detail follows conflict review and signed confidentiality. Applicants must not test suspected services or contact staff to determine the client.