Chief Digital Health Officer — Interim, Integrated Care

The mandate

A national virtual-care release generated unsafe escalation delays, and the permanent digital chief then began an extended medical leave. Product, medicine and technology now disagree on who can accept clinical risk, forcing the chief executive to install temporary executive authority.

The interim should arrive within three weeks for ten months; the incumbent may return, so this is explicitly a cover assignment rather than a conversion opportunity. At month eight the board will choose between return-to-role and an external search, with a minimum six-week transition in either case.

The seat can be handed back when urgent virtual consultations reach a ninety-five per cent escalation SLA for twelve weeks, the redesigned service supports 35,000 monthly encounters, and an independent clinical-safety review closes every high-severity finding.

The interim may prioritise the digital-health roadmap, pause unsafe features, approve clinical workflows and move up to ₹3 crore within the authorised portfolio. New patient-data processors, spend above ₹5 crore and any change to medical-liability cover need committee consent; permanent product hires are excluded.

This mandate does not replace core hospital systems, build a consumer wellness marketplace or renegotiate enterprise cloud contracts. Its narrow purpose is to make virtual care safe, dependable and governable at scale.

Why this seat is open

The planned chief is unavailable during the exact period when a troubled launch needs executive correction. The board cannot ask a product vice president or a clinical lead to arbitrate risks beyond either person's remit. Temporary authority will last until the incumbent returns or a new executive is inducted.

What you will own

• Reconstruct the failed release timeline and close each clinical-safety, product-control and operational ownership gap.
• Decide the minimum safe service scope, including which consultation types remain paused until evidence gates are met.
• Install a clinical-product change board with named risk acceptors, release criteria and emergency rollback authority.
• Redesign triage and escalation flows for urgent symptoms, prescription exceptions and interrupted consultations.
• Approve a sequenced capacity plan that supports 35,000 monthly encounters without unsafe clinician utilisation.
• Commission an independent safety review and clear all high-severity findings with traceable evidence.
• Deliver a return-to-role or successor pack containing roadmap rationale, safety cases, metrics and unresolved choices.

Candidate qualifications

• Executive leadership across digital health, clinical informatics or technology-enabled care with direct patient-safety accountability.
• Experience recovering a failed or paused digital-care product and restoring regulator, clinician and board confidence.
• Deep understanding of telemedicine practice, consent, prescribing controls, health-data privacy and clinical-risk management in India.
• Ability to translate product incidents into system controls without reducing the programme to technology remediation alone.
• Evidence of scaling clinician supply, service operations and digital product performance together under a common operating model.
• Credibility with software engineers and senior physicians, including the judgment to halt a release despite commercial pressure.

Non-negotiables

• Available to start in Chennai within three weeks and spend at least three days onsite.
• Will accept a cover mandate that may end with the incumbent's return rather than permanent conversion.
• No financial interest in telehealth platforms, prescribing networks or vendors considered by the client.
• Able to participate in out-of-hours incident command during severe patient-safety events.

1. 49 words maximum. What is your start availability, and can you cover severe incidents outside normal working hours?
2. 49 words maximum. Identify one digital-care release you stopped or reversed and the evidence that drove your decision.
3. 49 words maximum. What monthly encounter volume have you scaled safely, and which clinical SLA proved readiness?