Signal › Contributors
Ingrid Bergström
I trained as a physician at the University of Oslo. I practiced for three years in emergency medicine and then quit, which my parents have still not fully forgiven me for. The reason I left medicine wasn't burnout; I actually loved the clinical work. I left because I spent 40% of my time fighting software. The electronic health record system at my hospital was so poorly designed that I once watched a colleague spend 11 minutes logging a 3-minute patient interaction. I decided I could help more patients by fixing the tools than by using them.
In 2018, I joined a Norwegian digital health startup as a product manager. We were building a remote patient monitoring platform for chronic disease management. The product challenge was staggering: we had to satisfy patients (who wanted simplicity), clinicians (who wanted data), hospital administrators (who wanted cost savings), and regulators (who wanted compliance with an EU medical device regulation that runs to 400 pages). Every feature decision was a four-way negotiation between user needs, clinical evidence, regulatory requirements, and economic viability.
I became CPO in 2020 and led the product team through the CE marking process under the new EU MDR (Medical Device Regulation). This is the regulatory framework that determines whether a digital health product can legally be sold in Europe. It took us 18 months, cost €2M in regulatory consulting and clinical studies, and required us to document every product decision with clinical justification. Most health tech founders I meet underestimate this by at least 10x. They build a product and then discover that getting it to market legally takes longer than building it.
In 2023, I was invited to advise the Norwegian Health Directorate on their digital health strategy. I spent a year evaluating dozens of health tech products and vendors, which gave me a unique perspective on what separates the health tech companies that succeed from the ones that die in regulatory purgatory. The pattern is clear: the winners treat regulation as a product feature, not an overhead cost. They build compliance into their architecture from day one. They hire regulatory affairs people before they hire their fifth engineer. They understand that in health tech, trust is the product.
I joined Signal because health tech is a sector where the writing is either too clinical (published in academic journals that nobody reads) or too hype-driven (TechCrunch articles about "disrupting healthcare" that ignore the regulatory reality). I want to write about health tech product strategy for a general audience, with the clinical and regulatory specificity that the sector demands.
I live in Grünerløkka, Oslo. I cross-country ski (this is mandatory for Norwegians), I knit elaborate sweaters, and I firmly believe that the most important product decision in health tech is the one you make about data architecture on day one, because you'll live with it for a decade.