A combined digital and information mandate lands at a medtech company
Convatec, the medical products and technologies company, announced on August 14 that Dave Ubachs will become Chief Digital & Information Officer, joining the Executive Leadership Team effective September 1. Ubachs brings more than 30 years of international leadership across technology, digital transformation, data, analytics, and AI. Most recently he served as Group CIO and Chief Data Officer at Edenred, where he led a global technology organization of approximately 3,000 people spanning 45 countries.
The title itself is worth pausing on. Convatec chose to combine digital and information leadership into a single Chief Digital & Information Officer role rather than maintaining separate CIO and Chief Digital Officer functions, a structural decision more companies are making as the line between running infrastructure and driving digital transformation continues to blur, particularly when AI initiatives touch both domains simultaneously. It also reflects a governance bet that a single accountable executive, rather than two peers negotiating shared priorities across separate budgets, is better positioned to move quickly when data, digital product, and core infrastructure decisions all need to happen together.
A CV built specifically for cross-industry technology transformation
Ubachs's prior roles at Staples International, Ipsos, and Procter & Gamble give him direct experience across retail, market research, and manufacturing before this move into healthcare technology at Convatec. That breadth, rather than a career spent entirely inside one industry vertical, is precisely the profile increasingly sought for combined digital and information roles, where the job now spans enterprise infrastructure, customer-facing digital experience, and data strategy simultaneously.
CEO Jonny Mason said digital, data and AI are increasingly important to how Convatec delivers its strategy, supports customers and patients, and helps colleagues work more effectively, tying the hire explicitly to patient and customer outcomes rather than framing it as a pure back-office technology upgrade. Ubachs echoed that framing directly, saying he has always loved using data, AI and digital to help businesses perform better, and that at Convatec this connects directly to improving people's lives.
The transition window matters as much as the appointment
Angie Goodwin, the outgoing leader in this function, will depart at the end of September following a transition period that overlaps with Ubachs's first month in the role. A defined, month-long handover is a meaningfully different setup than an abrupt departure followed by a search, and it gives Ubachs direct access to institutional knowledge about in-flight technology programs, vendor relationships, and organizational dynamics before he is operating without that support.
For any organization managing its own technology leadership transitions, the length and structure of that handover window is a variable worth being deliberate about. A rushed or nonexistent transition period is one of the more common, and more avoidable, causes of stalled technology roadmaps in the first six months after a new CIO or CDIO arrives, regardless of how strong the incoming leader's credentials are. Boards and CEOs overseeing their own technology leadership searches should insist on a comparable overlap window as a standard term of any offer, rather than treating it as a courtesy to be negotiated only if the outgoing leader happens to ask for one.
What a combined digital and information seat means for governance
Organizations that split digital transformation leadership from core IT and information leadership often struggle with competing priorities and budget between the two functions, particularly when AI initiatives require both new customer-facing digital products and the underlying data infrastructure and governance to support them safely. Convatec's decision to fold both under Ubachs removes that internal friction point structurally, at the cost of concentrating significant scope and accountability in a single executive.
CIOs and CTOs at organizations currently running separate digital and information leadership tracks should use this appointment as a prompt to evaluate whether that split is still serving the organization or has become a source of internal competition for AI and data investment dollars. There is no universally correct answer, but the trend among large, complex organizations recruiting new technology leadership this year is clearly toward consolidation rather than further specialization.
The roadmap takeaway for healthcare and medtech technology leaders
For technology leaders at medtech and healthcare companies watching Convatec, Ubachs's specific mandate, spanning digital, data and information leadership with an explicit tie to patient and customer outcomes, is a useful benchmark for how the sector is starting to define this combined role. Expect Convatec's next several quarters of announcements to focus on data and AI initiatives framed around patient experience rather than pure operational efficiency, based on how both Mason and Ubachs described the mandate.
The broader lesson for any organization currently searching for its own next CIO or digital leader is to look specifically for candidates like Ubachs, with cross-industry experience spanning consumer, industrial, and now healthcare contexts, rather than narrowing the search to candidates with prior experience in your exact vertical. The skills required to run a combined digital and information function at this scale appear to transfer across industries more readily than conventional wisdom has assumed.
Medtech's technology leadership catch-up moment
Medical products and technology companies have historically lagged consumer and financial services in the sophistication of their digital and data leadership, often constrained by regulatory complexity and a slower pace of internal technology investment relative to sectors with fewer compliance hurdles. Convatec recruiting a CIO out of Edenred, a company built around large-scale, multi-country digital payment and benefits infrastructure, suggests medtech companies are now willing to import leadership talent from far faster-moving digital sectors rather than promoting from within a historically more conservative internal talent pool.
Other medtech and healthcare technology leaders should watch how Ubachs's tenure unfolds as a signal for their own recruiting strategy. If a leader with no prior healthcare-specific experience can successfully navigate Convatec's regulatory and patient-safety constraints while still delivering the kind of digital transformation pace he achieved at Edenred and Staples, that is a strong argument for healthcare organizations to widen their own CIO searches beyond candidates with narrow sector-specific backgrounds.
