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Reflections on my path to Product Leadership
If you had asked a younger version of me what I wanted to be when I grew up, ‘Product Team Lead in Healthtech’ wouldn’t have been on the radar. At that time, I was a keen musician, inspired by my father, a science teacher and musician.
Looking back, the path from those early passions, through pharmacy, to leadership at Patients Know Best (PKB) wasn’t a climb up a traditional career ladder. It was about following a thread of rigour, an interest in systems, and a bit of a gut feeling.
The orchestra of product management
How has an early interest in music influenced my work? In an orchestra, you practice your part in isolation, which can feel repetitive. However, when the group comes together, the result is where it matters. I carry that into my work today. I don’t mind the repetitive tasks if the outcome is significant. Breaking a large idea into its component parts and ensuring they work together is just conducting by another name.
Ten years in at PKB, my role has shifted to overseeing the company product roadmap. The company now operates across numerous NHS Trusts, national programmes, and international markets. It’s about planning how each part influences the next and ensuring the sequence actually works for the person using it.
Lessons from the pharmacy
I chose pharmacy as a career., following in my grandfather’s footsteps, It was a profession I respected, and it was also where I first saw the impact of a disjointed healthcare system.
As a pharmacist, I spent a lot of time verifying information, calling doctors to clarify prescriptions or trying to piece together a patient’s medical history to check for drug interactions. I saw firsthand how fragmented information was a safety risk.
Pharmacy drills into you that there is no room for error. You learn the importance of good system design, preventing mistakes before they ever reach the patient. In healthtech, we have to apply that same clinical rigour. If the design is poor, the consequences are real.
Trusting my instincts
After finishing a PhD, I was keen to try something new while I figured out my next steps. I landed an internship in the European Commission in Brussels, focusing on eHealth. This was a time of rapid personal and professional development. It was there I re-encountered PKB, having first heard of them while volunteering for Ashoka. I was once again struck by their mission and decided to reach out, joining them as a Project Manager. While I had initially expected to stay for a year or two, I’m still here ten years later! During this time my passion for this area has only grown, and the work continues to be deeply engaging and rewarding.
Moving to national systems
My decade at PKB has involved moving from managing individual projects to leading integrations with national government infrastructures.
A major milestone was our work with the IM1 API to provide patients with their GP data. Seeing this come through was rewarding because it opened new ways to support patient care.
The integration with the NHS App was another big one. Previously, registration was only possible via invite. Integrating with the NHS app -and being the first to do so - was a significant move. It required us to rethink how users access records, shifting to NHS login.That transition led to a significant increase in usage. Data that had been sitting idle was finally accessible to the people who needed it most: the patients.
Advice: Look for the good
Healthtech is a long game. It is highly regulated, often slow, and the systems are under immense pressure. Unlike consumer tech, you don't see results overnight.
My advice to those entering this space, especially aspiring leaders ,is something I learned from our founder, Mohammad: Stay optimistic. It is easy to default to complaining about resources or the pace of change. But to lead, you have to look for what’s good in the work, no matter how small.
If you find an area that interests you, follow it. Don't worry too much about what looks sensible on a CV. When you follow your curiosity, you might just find yourself ten years into a job you thought you'd only stay at for one.
About the campaign
techUK’s TechTogether campaign continues with a focus on ‘equity by design'. Our insights this week focus on the importance of inclusive design in product development, creating technology that is accessible to people with disabilities, tackling affordability, connectivity, and digital skills gaps through cross-sector partnerships and community-led initiatives, and, ensuring public services are co-designed with disabled, ethnic, and older users.
TechTogether - Week 3
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