UX Design for Healthcare and Healthtech Products
UX Design for Healthcare and Healthtech Products
UX Design for healthcare products ensures that medical software is safe and efficient to use in everyday care for the people who work with it daily. The core expertise lies in understanding complex clinical treatment processes and designing solutions that work on-site. From a UX perspective, the product landscape clusters into four main areas: clinical systems, medical device software, digital health, and AI-supported and connected care. Healthcare UX differs from other UX projects with two guiding questions: Can the user make the right decision at any time? And how can they complete their task as efficiently as possible?
Splore works as a UX consulting firm in this field closely integrated with development and product management, a setup that has proven successful in collaboration with HealthTech companies like Honic. The entry through UX Research and Prototyping focuses the development budget on functions that demonstrably create value, validated with real users before resources flow in the wrong direction.
What makes Healthcare UX special — and why specialized expertise is needed
People in the medical environment have a specific job to be done:
- Caring for patients
- Making treatment decisions
- Documenting therapy progress
- Analyzing data
The software they use are professional tools in a sensitive context, from the emergency room to the research platform, from the OR planning system to the patient app. UX work in healthcare means understanding these complex clinical treatment processes and designing solutions that stand where everyday clinical life allows no second chance. Only those who understand everyday care can develop relevant solutions.
What distinguishes Healthcare UX from UX work in other industries are two core axes:
Clinical Safety & Confidence
Can the user make the right decision at any time? Clinical software must provide clear information hierarchies, create orientation in complex data, and avoid operational errors. In systems with AI support, it adds: Recommendations must be understandable so that professionals can trust them and make informed decisions. Regulatory requirements like IEC 62366 for Usability Engineering are a component in this context, which are further explored on our page on UX in Medical Technology. Safe workflows arise when information architecture, interaction design, and validation work together.
Workflow Efficiency
How does the user complete their task as efficiently as possible? In everyday clinical life, every minute counts. Fewer clicks, automated routine steps, seamless transitions between process steps, reduced documentation effort, and smooth collaboration between professional groups. These are the UX levers that turn clinical software from a tool that is tolerated into one that noticeably eases the workday. Reducing cognitive load is not a comfort issue but a prerequisite for care quality.
These two axes determine what Healthcare UX aims for. Splore condenses them into six guiding values that support every project:
- **Clarity:** Information is understandable at first glance.
- **Safety:** Design minimizes the risk of operational errors.
- **Confidence:** Professionals trust the system and their own decisions.
- **Efficiency:** Tasks can be completed with minimal effort.
- **Collaboration:** The system supports collaboration between professional groups.
- **Transparency:** Processes and data flows are understandable.
For AI-supported products, additionally: The human remains responsible and retains control.
Why Healthcare UX is a strategic tool
UX Design in healthcare projects is not just a design performance but a strategic instrument. In a market where development cycles are expensive, clinical requirements are complex, and user acceptance is business-critical, the quality of UX work determines product success. The strategic function of UX is to bring the question of usability before the development decision.
Reducing development risk
Early validation through Research and Prototyping prevents products from being developed past the actual workflows of the target groups. Those who only realize after go-live that the operating concept does not fit the clinical process lose budget and acceptance. For HealthTech companies with limited resources, this means: more efficient path to a marketable solution, fewer iterations, more clarity.
Securing user acceptance
Clinical professionals have little tolerance for systems that interrupt the workflow. A healthcare product can be technically sophisticated. If it is perceived as a slowdown, it will be bypassed. UX work ensures that the product fits into existing workflows and is accepted in everyday care. Conversely, a system that noticeably simplifies clinical workflows quickly becomes a fixed part of everyday care.
Reducing complexity
Healthcare products serve diverse stakeholders with different perspectives, from physicians and nurses to researchers and patients. The information density in the clinical environment is steadily increasing: laboratory values, image data, patient histories, treatment protocols. UX work creates clarity: through prioritization of functions, through information architectures that work under time pressure, and through concepts that serve as a reliable decision-making basis for teams, management, and investors. This does not mean less functionality; it means clearer prioritization.
Laying the foundation for later approval steps
When usability is a mandatory criterion for approval, methodical UX work provides the substance: an understandable, safe, efficient application validated with real users. The formal examination and approval tests are the manufacturer's responsibility. UX Research creates the foundation for this.
Application fields for Healthcare UX
From a UX perspective, the product landscape in the healthcare market clusters into four main areas. Depending on the cluster, user groups, workflow complexity, and UX priorities differ significantly. What they all have in common is that the design must orient itself to the real processes of the people who use the product daily, not to assumptions about them.
Clinical Systems
Clinical systems form the largest area:
- **Hospital Information Systems (HIS):** central platform for patient management and clinical documentation.
- **Electronic Health Records (EHR):** treatment histories, findings, and medication at a glance.
- **Radiology Information Systems (RIS):** examination planning and reporting workflow in imaging.
- **Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS):** storage, retrieval, and distribution of medical image data.
- **Clinical Workflow Software:** OR coordination, intensive monitoring, nursing documentation, emergency room triage, lab connection, and report communication.
The UX focus is on high information density and time-critical decisions: Professionals need the right information at the right time, with as few clicks as possible and minimal error susceptibility. All systems share that users work under time pressure and must integrate information from different sources, often across professional groups, from physicians to nurses to medical controlling. In each of these areas, the quality of the information architecture decides whether the system relieves or burdens everyday care, whether it supports the treatment process or creates additional cognitive load.
Medical Device Software
Medical device software, such as imaging, ultrasound, monitoring, and therapy devices, is part of the healthcare product landscape systematics, but at Splore, it is further explored on the page on UX in Medical Technology. There, the specific requirements for device-related interfaces, the IEC 62366 and MDR standards, and formal validation are the focus.
Digital Health
The patient-oriented area includes:
- **Patient Apps:** therapy support, symptom diaries, medication reminders.
- **Telemedicine Applications:** video consultations, remote consultations, remote diagnostics.
- **Remote Care Solutions:** telemonitoring, digital follow-up care, home care coordination.
- **Digital Health Applications (DiGA):** CE-marked medical products prescribed by prescription, where usability is a mandatory approval criterion.
The UX focus is on designing therapy support that promotes adherence without being patronizing and remains usable throughout the product lifecycle. The target groups range from chronically ill patients to relatives to digitally less experienced users. Simple language, clear calls to action, and onboarding that builds trust are not optional in this cluster but prerequisites for effectiveness. Unlike clinical software, speed and information density are not the focus here, but comprehensibility and long-term engagement.
AI & Connected Care
This cluster includes:
- **AI-supported Assistance Systems:** Clinical Decision Support, diagnostic suggestions, risk scoring.
- **Ambient Documentation:** automatic documentation from doctor-patient conversations.
- **AI Copilots:** context-based support in clinical workflows.
- **Connected Care Platforms:** cross-sector coordination and data exchange.
- **Health Data and Research Platforms:** collaboration between data providers and researchers, data sovereignty, and transparent data access as a UX task.
These product types present a particular challenge for UX: building trust. When a system provides treatment recommendations or suggests diagnoses, professionals must be able to understand how the recommendation came about and retain control. UX work in this cluster means: designing explainability, mapping human-machine interaction so that the human remains responsible, and visualizing AI results so that they fit into existing clinical decision-making processes. The acceptance of AI only becomes apparent in exchange with doctors and nurses, which is why early user involvement is particularly crucial in this cluster. What is planned on paper as an efficiency gain must gain trust in everyday clinical life; this is only successful if UX work early on includes the perspective of treatment teams. Splore's work with the HealthTech startup Honic is an example of this product type.
In addition, pharmaceutical and life science software as well as administrative systems touch the healthcare market, but they follow different UX priorities and are not explored further here.
How Splore works in healthcare projects
Every healthcare project at Splore follows the human-centered design process (Human-Centered Design according to ISO 9241-210): understand, conceptualize, make prototypically tangible, validate with real users, iterate.
Understand
At the beginning is immersing in clinical processes: Who are the users, what tasks do they solve, what workflows must the system support, what interfaces exist between professional groups? UX Research] provides the insights on which all further decisions are based, not as a documentation exercise, but as a foundation for design decisions that stand in everyday care.
Conceptualize and make prototypically tangible
Insights are translated into tangible concepts that are testable. Prototyping in short cycles makes ideas visible, makes solution approaches tangible, and provides decision-making bases for teams, management, and investors before development budgets flow in the wrong direction. Especially in healthcare projects with multiple stakeholder groups, a prototype creates the common basis for discussion that requirement documents alone cannot provide.
Design and systematize
Where necessary, the design work culminates in a UI Design System, which ensures visual consistency across multiple products and touchpoints. In healthcare platforms with multiple user groups and different contexts, such as a research portal and a data provider view in the same ecosystem, a consistent design system is particularly effective.
Strategically accompany
Splore typically works in healthcare projects together with development and product management, a working method that has proven particularly successful in complex product landscapes where clinical requirements, technical feasibility, and business goals must be brought together. Regular strategic exchange ensures that UX insights flow into product decisions, not as a downstream step, but as an integrated part of product development.
Honic: UX and UI Design for a HealthTech Platform
Honic is an example of what the combination of platform complexity and data responsibility means for UX work.
Honic (Health Data Technologies GmbH) is a HealthTech startup that makes German medical care data accessible for research: digitally sovereign, with privacy and data security "by design". Honic operates an ecosystem of linkable care data for researchers and data providers. The starting point for the UX collaboration: a powerful platform with a clear vision and high pace, but without concrete user interfaces. The goal: to make the technological added value usable for the target group.
The challenges were diverse: different stakeholders with different perspectives, high demands on trust, access, and usability with sensitive data, no established UX vision, plus the time and budget pressure of an ambitious startup in a technically and regulatorily complex field.
Splore is responsible at Honic for three interlinked service areas as a well-coordinated team of UX, development, and product management: UX Design and Prototyping provides tangible concepts for validation in short cycles, as a decision-making basis for teams, investors, and development. UI Design and Systems includes the "HUI", the Honic UI System with component library, design guidelines, and design tokens, ensuring consistency across multiple products. UX Consulting accompanies strategically in regular exchange.
The results: more efficient path to a marketable solution, higher user acceptance, reduced complexity through clear prioritization, and trustworthiness that becomes tangible in the product. Dr. Henrik Matthies, Founder and CEO of Honic, describes Splore as a "partner for high-quality design language from a single source".
Talk to us about your healthcare product project
Talk to us about your healthcare product project
Are you developing clinical software, a digital health application, an AI-supported product, or a healthcare platform and looking for UX support that understands clinical workflows? We assess the need and propose a suitable framework.
FAQ
HealthTech products are primarily software and platform-driven: clinical systems, digital health applications, AI-supported assistance systems, and connected care platforms. In [Medical Technology](/ux-medizintechnik), the focus is on designing physical devices and device-related software, with standards like IEC 62366 and MDR as the regulatory framework. Both fields intersect where clinical software and medical devices integrate.
Methodical UX work provides the substance on which later approval steps build: an understandable, safe, efficient application validated with real users. [UX Research](/ux-research) and [Usability Testing](/ux-research) create this foundation. The formal examination and approval tests, whether DiGA procedures via BfArM or conformity assessment according to MDR, are the manufacturer's responsibility.
The earlier, the more effective. Early validation through [Research](/ux-research) and [Prototyping](/ux-design-prototyping) focuses the development budget on functions that demonstrably create value. For startups with limited resources, this avoids misdevelopment and creates a reliable decision-making basis for teams and investors.
Good UX design for clinical software works on two axes: Clinical Safety & Confidence — the system enables the right decision at any time through clear information hierarchies, orientation in complex data, and avoidance of operational errors. And Workflow Efficiency — tasks can be completed with minimal effort, routine steps are automated, transitions between process steps are seamless. In everyday clinical life, every minute counts; good UX relieves rather than creates additional complexity.
Clinical systems are aimed at professionals working under time pressure with high information density. The UX focus is on error minimization, quick access, and workflow integration. Patient apps are aimed at people with very different levels of digital competence. Here, motivation, understandable language, accessibility, and long-term use are the focus. Both fields require specialized UX expertise but with different priorities.
For health data platforms, trust is at the center of UX work. Users share sensitive data and expect data sovereignty to be tangible in the product, not just in the privacy policy. This requires transparent access controls, understandable data flows, and interfaces that communicate security. For consumer apps, trust is important; for health data, it is a functional prerequisite for use at all.
A good UX partner for HealthTech understands three things: first, the ability to quickly understand complex clinical treatment processes and workflows, second, the working methods of startups (short cycles, limited resources, high speed), and third, a toolbox of methods that delivers reliable results under these conditions. Splore brings this combination: UX methodology, healthcare context knowledge, and experience from working with HealthTech companies like Honic.