HEART RHYTHM SOCIETY
Product Strategist · Right Arrow · 2021–2025 · Healthcare · Nonprofit · Product Strategy
The Heart Rhythm Society is an international nonprofit focused on cardiac health advocacy. They engaged Right Arrow to lead the strategic groundwork for CardiQ, a new digital platform serving clinicians and health systems working to improve quality of care for patients with atrial fibrillation. What began as a single strategic engagement grew into a multi-year partnership spanning three separate projects.
CONTEXT
When alignment is the first deliverable, everything else follows.
HRS had stakeholders, partners, pharmaceutical funding, and a clear clinical mission. What they did not have was a shared vision for what the platform should be or do. Before anything could be designed or built, the organization needed to align on goals, select a technology vendor, and establish a foundation strong enough to carry through delivery. That groundwork was the first job.
ALIGNMENT BEFORE DESIGN
The stakeholder group included clinical leaders, quality improvement staff, IT administrators, and pharmaceutical partners. Each came to the project with different priorities and different definitions of success.
I led structured discovery and alignment workshops to surface those differences and work toward a shared product vision. The goal was not consensus for its own sake, but a foundation specific enough to actually guide decisions when they came.
RFP AND VENDOR SELECTION
Once strategic alignment was in place, the right technology foundation had to be found. I led the RFP development and vendor selection process, translating the product vision into requirements that vendors could respond to and that HRS stakeholders could use to evaluate options.
The RFP process was itself a clarifying exercise. Forcing the requirements into writing exposed assumptions that had not yet been tested and surfaced tradeoffs that stakeholders needed to confront before a vendor was chosen.
DELIVERY AND CREATIVE DIRECTION
I managed the product through Phase 1 delivery and extended my involvement beyond the original engagement scope to protect the outcome. When there is a risk of a gap opening between strategic intent and what actually gets built, staying present through delivery is part of the work.
Phase 2 brought a refresh of CardiQ's education library, expanding the platform's clinical content offering and addressing how clinicians access and navigate learning resources.
