SVP – Digital and Customer Platforms — Virtual-Care Division

The mandate

An Australian virtual-care division is preparing a planned redesign of patient access after growth exposed a misleading distinction between digital availability and clinical capacity. Patients can begin an interaction at any hour, but identity checks, triage, practitioner queues and follow-up operate in different platforms. Demand appears as clicks before it becomes accountable care. A new SVP – Digital and Customer Platforms will make the entire journey visible and governable.

Approximately 825 employees and material partners span clinical services, care navigation, product, engineering, data, service operations, security and customer support. The SVP owns product portfolio, platform engineering, service design, digital operations, customer technology and adoption, reporting to the Group Chief Executive or nominated sponsor. Clinical protocols remain with authorised leaders; the digital organisation must implement them faithfully and reveal when technology cannot.

The first design principle is that an open front door must lead somewhere safe. Registration, eligibility, consent and identity should collect only what is needed while ensuring the right record and service. When the division cannot accept demand within a clinically appropriate time, the platform must communicate alternatives and urgency guidance rather than leave a patient in an unowned queue.

Triage logic requires formal product governance. Symptoms, risk factors and context may route a patient towards self-care, scheduled review or urgent escalation. The SVP will ensure rules have clinical ownership, version control, testing and outcome monitoring. Machine-assisted recommendations need performance assessment across age, language, disability and other relevant populations, with a clear route for human override.

Capacity will be represented in clinically meaningful units. A practitioner marked online may lack the credential, language or pathway competence for the next patient. The platform must match demand to authorised capability and reserve capacity for priority cases. Wait-time estimates should reflect current queues and likely handling duration, not a simple average designed to encourage conversion.

Continuity after consultation is a core product outcome. Prescriptions, investigations, referrals and safety-net instructions must reach the right recipient and return evidence to the care record. The SVP will close gaps between video consultation, pharmacy, diagnostics and messaging. A completed screen session is not a completed episode if an ordered action remains unacknowledged.

Customers include patients, clinicians, carers, payers and service teams. Their needs can conflict. Adding mandatory clinician fields may improve reporting but reduce attention during a consultation; simplifying patient entry may remove information needed for safe routing. Product discovery will observe real work and use clinical risk assessment, not settle questions through preference voting.

Accessibility is mandatory. The division must support users with limited English, low digital confidence, visual or hearing impairment and constrained connectivity. Alternatives such as assisted access or telephone escalation must connect to the same governed pathway. The SVP will test abandonment and routing outcomes by relevant cohorts while protecting privacy and avoiding simplistic profiling.

Reliability standards will reflect clinical consequence. Identity, triage, consultation and critical follow-up functions need defined service levels, degradation modes and tested recovery. During an outage, teams must know which service can continue, which must pause and how records reconcile afterward. A general status page does not constitute clinical continuity.

The technology estate contains overlapping messaging, scheduling and customer platforms. Consolidation is desirable only where migration does not lose consent, clinical context or active tasks. The SVP will set architecture boundaries, data ownership and decommission evidence. Old systems will remain read-only where retention or investigation requires it, with access governed and expiry decided.

Product measures will shift away from registrations and session completion alone. The board should see appropriate routing, time to accountable clinician, unresolved action, continuity, abandonment, reliability and user effort. Commercial conversion remains relevant, but it cannot outrank safety or access truth. Each metric will have a source definition and owner.

Delivery governance needs fewer projects and stronger release evidence. Cross-functional teams will own patient journeys, not isolated features. Releases affecting clinical flow require scenario testing, operational readiness, training, monitoring and a rollback route. The SVP will reduce work in progress and stop initiatives whose benefits depend on adoption no team has resourced.

Cybersecurity and privacy must be designed into access. Authentication should be proportionate, privileged access tightly controlled and sensitive communications protected. Fraud controls require escalation that does not abandon legitimate patients. The SVP will partner with risk leaders on incident exercises that include patient communication and clinical backlog recovery.

What you will own

• Digital entry, triage, consultation and follow-up journeys.
• Product portfolio, platform architecture and engineering delivery.
• Clinically governed rules, releases and outcome monitoring.
• Capacity matching, queue transparency and assisted access.
• Accessibility, adoption and customer-platform performance.
• Reliability, outage operation and record reconciliation.
• Privacy, security and identity controls with accountable partners.
• Digital talent, operating model and succession.

The first 12 months

In the first 60 days, trace priority journeys, quantify unowned queue time and identify releases or rules operating without complete clinical evidence. Agree immediate safeguards and simplify the product portfolio.

By month six, launch capacity-aware routing for selected pathways, establish end-to-end action tracking and validate continuity procedures for platform disruption. Begin controlled retirement of one redundant customer technology.

At twelve months, reduce median time from digital entry to accountable clinical disposition by 35%, lower abandonment in priority cohorts by 25% and achieve 95% confirmed completion or explicit escalation for ordered follow-up actions. Critical journeys should meet 99.95% availability, with no unresolved patient task lost during a tested outage or migration.

What the sponsor will measure

• Digital demand becoming owned clinical work promptly.
• Triage rules governed, monitored and overrideable.
• Capacity matching based on authorised practitioner capability.
• Follow-up completion visible beyond the video encounter.
• Accessible routes producing comparable safe outcomes.
• Releases and outages managed by clinical consequence.

The person

You bring 22–28 years in digital product and platform leadership, including executive responsibility in virtual care, healthcare, insurance or another high-consequence customer environment. You have redesigned an end-to-end journey where operational capacity, professional judgement and technology had to work together.

Evidence should include platform reliability, clinical or regulated rule governance, accessibility and adoption at scale. You can lead engineers and product teams while challenging commercial measures that misrepresent patient outcomes. Australian healthcare exposure is strongly preferred. This permanent role is onsite in Sydney to keep digital decisions close to clinical and service operations.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is AUD 440,000–590,000 plus annual incentive and long-term participation linked to safe access, continuity, adoption, reliability, accessibility and leadership depth. The permanent appointment is onsite in Sydney, reporting to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive-committee sponsor. Planned hiring supports the next capacity and platform cycle.

Confidentiality

The division, patients, clinical rules, payers, practitioners, platforms, vendors and performance data remain confidential. Detailed access follows conflict review and signed confidentiality. Applicants must not test possible services, create patient accounts or contact providers to identify the organisation.