Context
Telefonica Digital / O2, across three markets: O2 UK, Movistar Spain, Vivo Brazil. Cross-functional team of up to 17 people across 5 locations.
Problem
Patients with chronic conditions required regular monitoring but hospital visits for routine check-ins were costly and, for many patients, neither feasible nor necessary. Hospital readmission rates were high and preventable. For Telefonica, the business case was proving that health services built on telecoms infrastructure could achieve measurable clinical outcomes — justifying continued investment and commercial rollout.
My role
I led the product and service across the full project: defining the service model, owning the research programme, managing clinical partner relationships, and driving delivery across a cross-functional team of up to 17 people in 5 locations. I was accountable for the product decisions that shaped what the service was and how it operated — not just how it looked.
Approach
The project started with ethnographic home visits across multiple patient groups. The critical insight was that patients didn't talk about the technology — they talked about their nurse. The weekly nurse call was the emotional anchor of the service. This shaped the service model completely: rather than optimising for automation and minimal human contact, I structured the service to protect nurse time for the conversations that mattered most. The clinical workflow was defined with nurses, cardiologists, and heads of department through co-creation sessions. Nurses owned day-to-day monitoring; doctors were brought in only on escalation — a deliberate product decision, not a default.
Outcome
- 48% decrease in mortality rate among enrolled patients
- 63% decrease in hospital readmission rate
