Wegovycare
References from this period: 5 LinkedIn recommendations, full text. They vouch for the role, not for any one claim.
Proof points: 7
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare, a digital service to drive retention and repeat prescriptions for Wegovy | The brief was a set of standalone features the business thought would help, but nobody had talked to the patients. | Find the lever that would keep patients on treatment and coming back for repeat prescriptions. | Talked to patients: everyone wanted the same three things, how much weight they will lose, whether this is normal, whether they are on track. Made those the core loop; built a weight-loss prediction model in Excel to answer the first, then a profiling engine to personalise the rest. | 10% penetration in the first national market. Fastest-scaling and biggest-adopted digital product at Novo. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare weight-loss prediction model | Patient research showed everyone wanted the same three things: how much weight they will lose, whether this is normal, whether they are on track. Nothing in the brief answered them. | Make those three questions the core loop of the product, and find the growth lever inside them. | Built a weight-loss prediction model answering the first question: a predicted trajectory for the individual to check progress against. Started as an Excel spreadsheet on a laptop; the maths worked out with the strongest backend engineer, then taken from concept to prototype. The same check-ins fed the profiling engine. | Patients could see whether they were on track against their own projection. The model was later spun out as a Bayesian API service, a product in its own right, and the team extended it from weight to HbA1c. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare, a digital service to drive retention and repeat prescriptions for Wegovy | Applied for a SaMD product role at Novo; put forward instead for a digital solution for a then unheard-of weight-loss medicine. The final-round brief was solution-first: standalone features the business thought would help. Nobody had spoken to patients. | Persuade the business to set the brief aside and start with the problem, then use that as a mandate to change how they worked. | First product team at Novo to interview patients, run discovery, build prototypes and co-create with markets. Led a cross-functional team of 10 across the full product lifecycle; it took persuasion and a leap of faith from stakeholders. | Launched on time and on budget. 10% penetration in the first national market, the biggest adoption of any digital solution at Novo; still live. Asked to scale the ways of working across the organisation and promoted to Associate Product Director. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, launch, 0 to 1, team leadership, stakeholders, budget |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare profiling and customisation engine, delivered as an interactive magazine | Research showed every patient journey is different and every patient has different needs. A linear app would not work, and the drop-off risks were different for each person. | Identify each patient's drop-off risks and act on them automatically, with a system that coped with real people who do not check in on schedule. | Tom's own idea and pattern, most of the algorithm his. Built a continuous profiling engine combining clinical data, usage signals and PROMs. Applied a consumer marketing playbook to act on the top risk: it decided what content was shown and could trigger a messaging flow. Ran on fuzzy logic, tolerating gaps and misuse. Output to the patient: an interactive magazine that changed with them. | Every patient got a personalised experience from one product and one codebase. Part of the launch that reached 10% adoption in the first market and became the fastest-scaling digital product at Novo. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, launch, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare, digital patient platform for obesity medicine, built to scale | Every market needed its own version of every digital product, so nothing at Novo had ever scaled beyond one country. | Build one product that many markets could adopt and adapt without forking it. | Designed for scale: modular architecture, feature flags, an integrated CMS and a translation pipeline. Systematised co-creation with the markets so they shaped the product rather than waiting for it. | Novo's first digital health product adopted by multiple markets. First digital Novo product to scale. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare releases Wegovycare release process | Release cycles for digital products at Novo were yearly. Every release carried heavy documentation for a high-regulation environment, and the documentation was written by hand. | Release often enough to learn from patients, inside the same regulatory rules. | Automated the documentation and the release workflows so the compliance paperwork fell out of the build rather than being written afterwards. | Release cycles went from yearly to bi-monthly. Fast for pharma. Iterative learning became possible. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, compliance, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare roadmap Wegovycare roadmap | A project-model organisation steered by deliverables and dates. Nobody on the product had a way of saying what mattered next, or why. | Own the product vision and the backlog, and steer priorities by what patients did and said rather than by the plan. | Set the vision. Implemented OKRs, as in every product, else how do you know you have succeeded. Owned the backlog end to end: problem statements, user stories, acceptance criteria, sprint-by-sprint prioritisation with a cross-functional team of 10. Steered priorities and the roadmap with qualitative and quantitative signals together, patient interviews beside usage data. | A roadmap that traced back to patient evidence and a definition of success the stakeholders had agreed up front. The product hit 10% adoption in its first market against that definition. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
Tell me about the Wegovycare role
source: Tom's own account
Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk (Mar 2020 - Feb 2022), building Wegovycare - a retention-focused digital service to increase repeat prescriptions for Wegovy.
I led the full product lifecycle end to end, but it was really a stealth transformation project, where I could bring my learnings from LEO but this time to in-house transformation.
Key achievements:
- Led the full product life-cycle, introducing discovery, rapid prototyping, iterative development, and automated documentation to the organisation.
- Automated documentation and shifted release cycles from yearly to bi-monthly in high-regulation environment, enabling iterative learning.
- Built a weight-loss prediction algorithm from concept to prototype (later spun out into a new API product)
- Achieved 10% penetration in our first national market
I was asked to scale these learnings across the product organisation and was promoted to Associate Product Director.
Direct answers
- Scaling Wegovycare: release cycles were yearly, with heavy documentation in a high-regulation environment, and every market needed its own version. Designed for scale (modular architecture, feature flags, CMS and translation pipeline), automated the documentation, and release cycles went from yearly to bi-monthly; adopted by multiple markets.
- Patient interviews surfaced two insights: every patient's journey is different, but everyone wants to know the same things - how much weight will I lose, is this normal, am I on track. Those three questions became the core loop, and the weight-loss prediction model answered the first.
- The brief I was given in my final-round interview was solution-first: a set of standalone features the business thought would help. Nobody had spoken to patients.
- Through research identified every user-journey is different. Built risk-profiling engine combining clinical data, usage signals, & PROMs to identify drop-off risks.
- Applied consumer marketing playbook to act on risks, personalising experience for each patient. Built profiling and customisation engine to create an interactive magazine.
- Digital patient platform for obesity medicine, built to scale. Designed for scaling: modular architecture, feature flags, integrated CMS & translation pipeline, and systematised cocreation with markets.
- First digital Novo product to successfully scale. Made Novo's first digital health product adopted by multiple markets.
- Led cross-functional team of 10. Set vision, implemented OKRs & used qual-quant signals to steer priorities and shape the roadmap.
- Identified a key growth lever. Created a weight-loss prediction model in Excel, now spun-out to a Bayesian API service.
- Title: Senior Product Manager; the internal title was Product Owner. Same role.
- Adoption, Wegovycare: involved affiliates early to generate learnings & create buy-in; systematised cocreation with markets; 10% penetration in our first national market; biggest adoption of any digital patient solution at Novo; the resistance was a "you're not working if you're not coding" culture, and it took persuasion and a leap of faith from our stakeholders[NOVO.R1.TRANSFORM]. At LEO, made rapid prototyping and direct user interviews standard practice across all product teams[LEO].
- Wegovycare was built as non-SaMD and bound by the drug label: it could only recommend the standard titration. The weight-loss prediction model started as an Excel spreadsheet, was spun out as a Bayesian API service, and the team later extended it to HbA1c[NOVO.R1].
source: Tom's own account, direct answers
Related
- Wegovycare: how did you transform ways of working at Novo NOVO.R1.TRANSFORM
- Skincoach: tell me about Skincoach LEO.R2
- TREAT: tell me about the time you optimised the wrong thing LEO.R1.STORY.FEELS
How did you change ways of working at Novo?
source: Tom's own account
Innovation Labs are an interesting idea, but unfortunately rarely work in practice. I still believed there was enormous potential in healthcare, so this time wanted to try it from the inside - transformation by doing.
I got my first opportunity in my final round job interview at Novo, when I convinced the business to set-aside their solution-first brief, and to talk to patients and start with the problem instead. I was fortunate enough to be offered the role, and use this as a mandate to completely reinvent their ways of working. We were the first product team to interview patients, run discovery, make prototypes, co-create with markets and so on. It wasn't straight-forward and took persuasion and a leap of faith from our stakeholders, but the results spoke for themselves.
I was asked to scale these learnings across the product organisation and was promoted to Associate Product Director.
Direct answers
- Wegovycare launched on time and on budget, with 10% penetration in the first national market.
- Borrowed an anthropologist from another division & proved the value. It later became the Insights team.
source: Tom's own account, direct answers