Telehealth, simply put, is some type of delivery. It helps to provide health care services when patients and health professionals are separated by distance via remote technologies. Telehealth uses technologies for the exchange of information for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and injuries for the patients. Live video conferencing, mobile health apps and remote patient monitoring (RPM) are examples of technologies used in telehealth.
It’s Healthtech time
Telehealth is improving the healthcare industry in many ways, the first of which is increasing its accessibility. Telehealth allows specialists to visit patients virtually from any place in the world by improving access as well as making a wider range of healthcare services available via telemedicine.
Today’s Telehealth environment consists of a global ecosystem of myriad digital solutions. There are two alarming end-users trends that you should pay attention to when considering Telehealth design and solutions.
What doctors struggle the most with
What people looking for when they choose the healthcare providers
Providing virtualized healthcare to any place in the world is one of the best-known applications of telehealth. But the medical industry is using it in several other ways, including:
Urgent help in distance. It can be a headache or sore throat. There are many medical complaints that aren’t life-threatening, but they need some professional attention. Virtual care services allow skilled health personnel to treat minor complaints, including providing appropriate prescriptions.
Stay in contact. Qualified medical personnel can use messages, phone and video calls to follow up the patients after they are discharged from the hospital. This way, improves worker productivity from not having to take time off and travel to appointments and ensures each patient understands the importance and carries out recovery and treatment plans. Also, telehealth platforms can automate much of the communication process, including sending reminders to the patients.
Updating online prescription. Telehealth provides the possibility to update online prescriptions even If you’ve been unable to get to your own doctor to refill a current prescription.
Monitoring of patients with chronic conditions. For these patients, it is one of the best benefits of telehealth. Virtual care helps those who have mobility issues, mental illness, and other conditions that may prevent them from going to in person medical appointments.
Facilitating care to rural areas. Telehealth is a great way to provide patients in places that are outside the current health delivery system with access to quality care. In the event of a medical emergency, telemedicine makes it possible to coordinate with specialists in other regions without wasting time to provide patients with effective treatment.
Increased patient satisfaction. In addition to referrals, many patients assess and choose healthcare providers through online reviews. As such, you must have positive reviews that will attract new patients. Telemedicine helps improve patient satisfaction scores by providing convenience of care and reducing wait time. The providers have the opportunity to offer remote services to the patients and make it convenient for them to receive medical attention. Also, this process reduces in-hospital visits.
All right, let’s move on to the design
Telehealth platforms require a unique approach to service design. As you can imagine, it isn’t the same way, say, for a food delivery service.
Telehealth is not about technology, it’s about people
That’s a good reminder that you need to create space for telehealth that provides human connections and assistance. The healthcare industry is unique and complex, and it can be challenging to set up. Establishing fundamental principles to guide telehealth design will help us keep sight of the user experience and user journey throughout different healthcare systems.
In this article, we’ll highlight the important and unique challenges in the design faced by digital health companies and startups.
Research. To begin, you need a shared understanding of how you usually provide face to face care. You will need a solid understanding of the patient’s journey through your service.
Construction. Based on our research findings, you need to discuss them with your client. There is the moment when you draft innovative solutions and delve into user journeys. We identify the most promising ideas based on jointly developed options. Service design can be quite abstract. The main idea is to find key service touchpoints.
Strategize and develop Next, it is necessary to work with your clients to co-create a product roadmap and business strategy. Together with medical professionals, you develop an extensive plan of the envisioned telehealth design, listing interactions between users, new processes, and workflows. Also, don’t forget to define the physical and digital things that will be used. By the end of this step, you’ve created visual content and material to start the development process.
Taking it live. From our experience, we recommend turning digital and physical artifacts into minimum viable products (MVP). MVP is essential to clinical trials. There is a product that has basic features and can be used to get feedback from the users.
After the main last modifications, it’s time for launch! At this stage, it’s important to provide testing to ensure that the envisioned workflow and interactions are happening as intended.
That’s it
To sum up, telemedicine is full of benefits for patients and healthcare providers. When people have had a taste of telehealth, they’re willing to continue using this convenient care option.
Telehealth’s future looks very bright, doesn’t it?
Also, it’s obvious to see continued strong growth and upgrade around devices, communication channels, telemedicine services, and telehealth platforms. Look for them to become increasingly user-friendly and convenient. As this happens, we can expect to see a resulting increase in users. After all, good design is the right way to improve engagement.
Designers will need to imagine themselves in both the patients’ and providers’ roles during the preparation for the start to create the design for telehealth. Every detail of a visit, from the method of scheduling appointments to the distribution of follow-up procedures, should be carefully planned to ensure the best outcomes and clear understanding.
We can expect to see digital pharmacies, virtual appointments, online triage tools, and remote monitoring gain in popularity. It may well become the new normal in healthcare.
The future of healthcare is digital. In 2022 alone, the global patient portal market reached $2.9B, as the Grand View Research reports. By 2030, it’s projected to grow even higher—at a CAGR of 19.44%. This trend reflects how public and private healthcare organizations strive to digitize paper documentation and automate everyday business operations.
Indeed, the stakes in healthcare are high. Even minor errors can lead to incorrect diagnoses and worsen patients’ conditions. This is where patient portal software greatly minimizes errors, particularly those caused by human factors
Below, read on how to create a patient portal. We’ll analyze the target audience’s needs, dive into the most successful examples of its implementation, and examine the nature of the target audience's requirements.
What is a patient portal system?
An online patient portal is a web or mobile solution (usually for Android and iOS platforms) that gives patients access to medical records, helps schedule appointments in a few clicks, and easily communicate with healthcare providers at any time.
By automating the interaction between the parties via the patient portal, organizations can improve the quality of care while making their services more accessible and convenient for patients.
In particular, modern patient portal requirements are:
Fast and secure access to their medical data and records with guaranteed privacy protection.
High-quality medical services without the need to wait in long queues.
A clear understanding of the treatment plan and progress.
Healthcare organizations instead aim to:
Reduce their administrative costs – in particular, for maintaining paper documentation.
Maximize personnel efficiency without the risk of burnout.
Increase patient satisfaction through transparent interaction and remote patient monitoring.
Comply with the healthcare regulations.
Reach a new level of income by reducing expenses and attracting new patients.
That is why the patient portal system is the one-stop solution that, if implemented correctly, covers all the above-mentioned needs. This is typically achieved through the following features:
Access to medical records (including medical history and test results).
Appointment booking (with the option to select the date, time, and doctor).
Online consultations (for example, via video calls and chats with doctors).
Repeat prescription orders (automatic issuance of electronic prescriptions and reminders for refills).
Online bill payment.
Personal data management (including patient contact information).
Push notifications (reminders for upcoming visits, tests, vaccinations, etc.).
Educational materials.
Feedback tools (surveys for patient satisfaction and forms for submitting complaints, etc.).
Types of patient portals: Which fits your healthcare needs?
Generally, there are two global types of patient portals: integrated and standalone. The former is presented as a component of electronic health records (EMR/EHR) and is fully tied to the infrastructure of a healthcare facility. Integrated portals ensure uninterrupted data exchange between doctors and patients but, in the case of ready-made solutions, are limited by the functionality offered by the specific healthcare provider.
Standalone portals, however, come in two forms: SaaS and on-premise. The former are hosted in the cloud and are available by subscription, which is especially convenient for healthcare providers within small organizations. Their advantage is quick deployment and configuration. At the same time, their customization options are often limited.
As for the second category, these are software solutions installed on local servers of a specific healthcare organization. They provide comprehensive control over data but require significant infrastructure and support costs. They can also be difficult to scale and integrate with third-party solutions.
It is worth noting that every medical organization has its own regular processes and specific business tasks distributed among different departments. In particular:
The reception desk keeps track of patient records.
Laboratories collect, process, and store test results.
The finance department is responsible for payments and insurance processes.
Doctors and medical personnel work with medical records and appointments.
All the above processes can rarely be integrated into a single system, which makes it difficult to automate them using only one off-the-shelf patient portal. Moreover, medical institutions vary greatly in specialization (including clinics, dentistry, laboratories, hospitals, etc.), and ready-made products do not always meet their needs.
If we add to this the need to comply with regional security standards for patient data, it becomes clear that out-of-the-box solutions may not be viable. This is the main reason why healthcare organizations are increasingly resorting to custom healthcare portal development.
Patient portal requirements: Key features and functionalities
Now, let's check the main functionalities and features that should be integrated into a patient portal.
User authentication and access management system
This portal component uses OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect for secure login. It protects users' credentials and enables multi-factor authentication. Usually, developers provide multi-level access with restrictions based on user roles (including patients, doctors, administrators, etc.).
At the same time, when implementing role-based access, it is important to adhere to widely recognized patient data security policies, such as HIPAA and GDPR. Specifically, doctors and administrators should have full access to all patient data. In contrast, individual patients should only be able to view, edit, and delete their info.
Medical data storage
The storage is located on local or cloud servers using AES-256 and TLS 1.3 for data encryption. By the way, many cloud vendors have ready-made solutions for healthcare organizations that meet the standards of patient data privacy (including AWS HealthLake, Azure Healthcare, and others). It is also crucial to ensure that such storage is protected against data misuse and unauthorized access.
Integration with EHR systems
This integration is necessary for consolidating patient data. Thus, developers must adhere to FHIR and HL7 standards to ensure compatibility and data exchange. As for the integration itself, if we are not talking about legacy solutions, it is carried out through an API.
Finally, to ensure that the patient portal system complies with the requirements of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (particularly, the ONC's Cures Act), it is essential that the platform could get full access to the patient, with all the ability to edit and delete.
Appointment schedules, doctors’ cards, and telemedicine tools
The first two components involve creating a catalog with therapists’ information and a scheduling system where patients can book visits. This can be achieved through RESTful API to synchronize with hospital calendars. Also, integrating with trusted video communication platforms like Zoom Healthcare can facilitate direct communication between patients and doctors.
Automation of bill calculations and online payments
Online payments are processed through integrations with payment gateways like Stripe or PayPal. In general, they must support PCI DSS standards. As for the automated billing system, this is essentially a regular calculator that “pulls up” data on the cost of services selected by the patient and sums them up (minus insurance and benefits, if any).
Integration with wearable devices
This is necessary so that doctors can monitor the condition of patients in real time. To do this, developers use APIs to collect data from devices (for example, from Apple HealthKit or Google Fit, as well as more specialized IoT equipment). At the same time, they must also implement a mechanism for obtaining prior patient consent to collect personal data.
Messaging
It also makes sense to integrate a chat (with the ability to attach media files) for interaction with doctors, supporting end-to-end encryption (E2E) and using WebSockets protocols that provide real-time messaging.
User dashboards
The patient portal needs an interface for each user role. Basically, it should adapt the data and tools for doctors, admins, and patients. Among other things, it can also be enriched with advanced analytical tools. For example, Power BI or Tableau can be used to generate reports and visualize data (assessing attendance dynamics, treatment results, patient satisfaction, etc.).
How to develop a patient portal software: From concept to launch
When it comes to custom solutions, our telehealth website development services are provided in several subsequent stages. Let’s consider them in detail.
Ideation and requirements analysis
At this stage, our team consolidates the portal concept of custom healthcare portal development, according to your business goals, unique aspects of your internal business processes and IT infrastructure, the needs of the target audience, and an analysis of competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Based on this blueprint, we create documentation indicating functional and non-functional requirements.
Architecture design
From now on, our patient portal development team has everything ready to define the project's technological stack (for the frontend, backend, and database) and choose a specific architectural approach. We also approve the necessary third-party Integrations (including EHR, payment gateways, telemedicine solutions, etc.).
Finally, we select tools and protocols to ensure our portal has a proper security level, including data encryption, user authentication/authorization methods, diagrams of interaction between components, etc.
UI/UX design
This stage involves building interface prototypes and gradually transforming them into a full-fledged design after usability testing. At the same time, our patient portal app development experts always take into account the requirements for the accessibility of the user interface. Basically, they are most accurately outlined in the WCAG 2.1 and ADA guidelines.
Development
Now, we can start working on the frontend and backend of the patient portal. Once individual functional modules are ready, we conduct unit testing to prevent hard-to-fix bugs at later stages of the project. This stage also involves the implementation of security mechanisms and integration with third-party solutions.
Testing and quality control
When the code base is ready, our patient portal development experts conduct rigorous testing, including functional, load, security, usability, etc. This stage ensures that the solution meets the best specs and software quality standards in healthcare.
Deployment and launch
Before launching the portal, we prepare all the necessary infrastructure, build a CI/CD pipeline, and set up a monitoring system. If needed, we can train your staff on how to use the portal. After all the previous stages are checked—we usually start deployment.
Post-release support and updates
To better understand its further optimization, our patient portal development experts regularly check the portal’s logs and metrics, collecting feedback. In addition, as post-release bugs are discovered, we fix them and, if necessary, implement new features.
Understanding the needs of your patients
A patient portal and medical website design should fully adapt to the target audience's problems. That is why it is essential to define them in advance. Based on our experience, we would like to highlight the following ones:
Long wait time when making an appointment. Patients often encounter long wait times in phone and in-person queues. A patient portal can help. It lets users book online appointments 24/7 and choose a specialist. In addition, it sends SMS or push notifications to remind patients about upcoming visits.
Lack of full access to medical data. Many patients are forced to visit clinics because healthcare organizations still document their test results manually. The patient portal gives access to electronic medical records, test results, and doctor recommendations, which can be easily downloaded or saved (for offline access).
Lack of understanding of the treatment plans. Patients may find it difficult to track their treatments' progress, which may result in forgotten, delayed, or canceled visits and procedures. To prevent this, portals display the treatment plan and the current status of therapy. In addition, patients get notifications about upcoming procedures, calendars, and recommendations, which is very smart.
Difficulties in paying for medical services. The need for patients to be physically present makes offline payments resource-intensive. Patient portals eliminate this headache with integrated payment systems, allowing users to view their payment history and current bills in just a few clicks.
Insufficient communication with the attending physician. In-person appointments to explain test results and treatment plans can be time-consuming for both patients and healthcare providers. Patient portals streamline this process with online chat and video calling capabilities.
Weak control over the treatment of chronic conditions. Patients with chronic conditions often lack convenient tools for regular monitoring. Portals can address this with real-time health data visualization, medication reminders, and appointment scheduling, as well as integrating with wearable devices for continuous data collection.
Low involvement in the treatment process. Since some patients find it difficult to understand how their actions affect treatment results, the patient portal development team can also add interactive tools to the portal to track patients' treatment progress or provide educational materials. Gamification elements can enhance the effect.
Patient portal development challenges and solutions
In this section, we will analyze the most typical challenges of patient portal software development and the most effective ways to overcome them.
Ensuring compliance with regulations. Telemedicine hugely relies on strong data protection, first—to comply with laws like HIPAA and GDPR, and second—obviously, it is for patient trust. End-to-end encryption, role-based access control (RBAC), and multi-factor authentication are key practices, along with regular system audits and penetration testing to ensure security.
Integration with existing solutions in the organization's IT infrastructure. Many healthcare providers still use older systems that don't easily connect with modern software. To solve this, developers can build 'middleware'—software that acts as a bridge—to automate data transfer between patient portals and other systems, ensuring everything works smoothly.
Ensuring high performance and scalability. Many portals frequently freeze when user traffic exceeds the original design capacity. To solve this, developers can host the portal in a cloud environment that scales as users grow and use a microservice architecture to balance the workload across the portal's services. Additionally, they can optimize a database through indexing and caching.
Ensuring intuitiveness. Since the target audience of patient portals is diverse (including the elderly, people with disabilities, and people with no technical literacy), there should be universal access to the full use of all portal functionality.To solve this, during the development of the patient portal software, the team should conduct user research and surveys to guide and optimize the software effectively. They should also adhere to the compliance of this software with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
Accessibility on mobile OSes. As patients increasingly manage their healthcare on digital devices, patient portals must offer a seamless mobile experience. Poor mobile optimization can lead to slow loading times and display issues. Developers can address this by building progressive web apps (PWAs) or cross-platform solutions, implementing offline access for key features, and optimizing content loading with techniques like lazy loading and data compression.
Patient portal software cost: What to expect
The cost of telemedicine app development depends on project complexity, the team involved in the patient portal software development process, geographic location, development timeline, and the scope of features. Let's examine each of the points that influenced the cost in detail:
1. Project complexity
Basic consultation apps with user registration, appointment scheduling, video calls, and messaging: $30K-$100K.
Advanced telehealth platforms with multi-user portals, integrated EHR, and health analytics: $100K-$300K+.
Telemedicine platforms with IoT/AI integration: $250K-$500K.
2. Team composition
A typical team for creating a basic patient portal usually includes:
2-3 developers: Where 1-2 are front-end developers, and 1 back-end developer.
The project manager: Tracks the project goals and wins.
QA specialist: Tests the app to make sure it works correctly.
3. Development timeline
The time it takes for patient portal software development also affects costs. Most telemedicine apps take between 2 to 6 months to develop:
Simple apps usually take about 2-3 months.
More complex apps may take up to 6-12 months.
4. Geographic location
American tech experts can be expensive. For example, a front-end developer might earn over $100K annually, about $8K monthly. He might charge between $70K-$80K for a three-month project.
Hiring remote developers can save you money. For instance, Eastern European developers or other regions often charge between $2,500 and $3,500 monthly. You can easily hire a similar team for about $30K to $40K for the same project.
If you want to find out the patient portal software cost in your case, please fill out this contact form.
Improving patient outcomes with data management: A case by Darly Solutions
From theory to practice—let's examine our relevant Darly Solutions experience through a top case from our portfolio.
In particular, we were approached by a HealthTech company specializing in consolidating unstructured medical data for organizations in the healthcare sector. They needed a custom digital solution to monitor clinical data.
Faced with a tight deadline and the need for high precision, we meticulously planned and assigned all the UX/UI design, web development, QA, and project management tasks. We also reviewed the team's work schedule, as some members had to work overtime. Finally, we carefully chose the technology stack. We settled on Angular, HTML, CSS, Docker, ngRx, TailwindCSS, NGX Pagination, and JSON.
Finally, our efforts paid off. We launched the product on time and met all design, functionality, and quality standards. As a result, the client has a competitive product with all the chances to thrive in the innovative telemedicine sector.
In general, the future of patient portal software development is closely connected with the fast development of modern technologies, such as:
Artificial intelligence and machine learning. These technologies will personalize the portal and related healthcare services. AI-powered chatbots, including ones with recognition of human voice commands, will assist with scheduling appointments and answering FAQs. In advance, machine learning can also analyze patient data and symptoms to provide preliminary diagnoses.
Blockchain. The introduction of blockchain technologies in patient portals can be aimed at more secure storage of their medical records and ensuring access to them only to authorized users. In addition, with its help, each interaction with data (adding, editing, and deleting) will be recorded, increasing the system's transparency.
Virtual and augmented reality. These technologies can form the basis of next-generation telemedicine solutions. In particular, in the future, patients will be able to interact with doctors at a distance without reducing the quality of service. AR interfaces will also help inform patients about upcoming treatment plans.
Internet of Things and integration with wearable devices. IoT solutions can provide end-to-end RPM in real-time (for example, portals will be able to collect and analyze data on the patient's pulse, blood pressure, oxygen level, and activity). Based on this data, doctors can receive instant notifications of critical changes regardless of patients' locations.
Big data and business intelligence. Examples of patient portals use big data to identify trends, such as tracking the rise in the incidence of a particular virus or assessing the effectiveness of treatments. Also, end-to-end medical data analysis ensures timely prediction of exacerbation of chronic diseases. Finally, doctors and administrators of healthcare institutions will be able to monitor departments' workloads and optimize appointment scheduling.
Biometric identification. Biometric mechanisms can give users access to the portal through fingerprint, face, or voice scanning, making the authorization process more secure and easier.
Conclusion
Now you know everything about patient portal development and can safely choose an off-the-shelf solution or search for a team to implement a custom one. If the second option is closer to you but you would not like to turn the search process into a real headache, you can contact us, and we will be happy to discuss the details of our future cooperation to implement your idea.
The HealthTech inductry is developing rapidly: according to Statista, by the end of 2024, its global capitalization is expected to reach a record 610.20 billion US dollars. This growth is driven by increasing demand for advanced healthcare solutions, especially as the number of digital offerings in this sector rises. With this growth comes intensified competition, pushing organizations to focus on building user loyalty by enhancing the quality of their services. In the healthcare context, providing a top-tier user experience (UX) becomes essential for driving user satisfaction and engagement. This article delves into the principles, challenges, and best practices for crafting exceptional UX in MedTech, telemedicine, and digital health solutions.
HealthTech Market Overview
One of the largest segments of the medtech market is medical equipment, which is projected to reach $511.20 billion in capitalization by 2024. Key areas of development include:
Diagnostics and intervention: Innovative tools for early detection and treatment of diseases.
Genetic research: Advanced solutions to decode and leverage genetic data.
Patient mobility: Technologies that improve access and convenience for patients, especially those with chronic conditions.
This evolution is largely influenced by an aging global population, which drives sustained investment in healthcare technology. To remain competitive, medtech companies must integrate cutting-edge systems and focus on wearables, telemedicine, and personalized healthcare UX design to deliver unparalleled user experiences.
The Role of Telemedicine in Healthcare UX
Telemedicine has transformed healthcare delivery by enabling remote consultations, diagnosis, and treatment through digital platforms. Its success depends heavily on intuitive UX design, ensuring that both patients and healthcare providers can interact seamlessly.
Key UX Considerations for Telemedicine:
Real-Time Accessibility: Patients and doctors must connect effortlessly through video calls, chats, and data-sharing interfaces, regardless of their device or location.
Intuitive Navigation: Complex interfaces can delay care. Clear layouts and straightforward workflows are essential for urgent medical situations.
Security and Compliance: Telemedicine platforms must protect sensitive health data, adhering to HIPAA, GDPR, and other regulatory standards.
Integration with EHR/EMR Systems: To provide seamless care, telemedicine solutions must integrate with electronic health records, ensuring real-time access to patient histories and reports.
User Support: Telemedicine systems should include built-in assistance features, such as chatbots or FAQs, to guide users through the platform.
In turn, a well-thought-out medical UX design can speed up the execution of targeted actions by users, minimize the risk of errors, and generally reduce the cognitive load that new users of a particular digital solution face the first time.
Digital Health and Personalized Care
Digital health encompasses a broad range of solutions, including fitness apps, chronic disease management platforms, and AI-driven diagnostic tools. Personalization is at the heart of digital health, enabling tailored care for individual patients.
Key Elements of Personalization in Digital Health UX:
Adaptive Dashboards: Dashboards that adjust to display metrics relevant to specific users, such as glucose levels for diabetics or activity levels for fitness enthusiasts.
AI-Powered Recommendations: Leveraging wearable data and patient history to provide personalized health insights, such as medication reminders or lifestyle adjustments.
Behavioral Nudges: Notifications and reminders based on real-time data from wearables, such as prompts to stay active or alerts for irregular heart rates.
Collaborative Tools: Features that allow patients to share health progress with their healthcare providers, enabling more informed decision-making.
Data Visualization: Simplified visuals, such as graphs and heat maps, to help patients understand complex health data without requiring medical expertise.
Integration with Wearables
Wearable devices are enabling real-time data collection and fostering proactive patient care. These devices, including fitness trackers, smartwatches, and specialized medical wearables, provide essential metrics such as heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, and oxygen levels.
To stay relevant in the modern healthcare ecosystem, medtech systems must:
Seamlessly integrate with wearables: Facilitate data synchronization from devices to centralized healthcare systems.
Enable flexibility: Support compatibility with various devices to cater to diverse patient needs.
Enhance real-time insights: Convert wearable data into actionable metrics that healthcare providers and patients can use to make informed decisions.
Integration with wearables empowers healthcare providers to:
Leverage AI-powered analytics to predict health deterioration.
Tailor personalized care plans based on real-time patient data.
What Is HealthTech UX Design?
Healthcare UX design focuses on creating digital healthcare solutions that are functional, visually appealing, and accessible to all users, including patients and medical staff. A well-executed healthcare UX design reduces cognitive load, minimizes errors, and speeds up workflows in stressful environments.
“When designing for the Healthcare industry, it is crucial to keep in mind that every solution you create affects your users’ health – therefore, you cannot afford to produce half-baked or generic solutions as it puts someone’s well-being at risk. Cater to your users, make your design accessible, and ensure that your solutions are consistent and flexible across all mediums – that’s how you create a truly excellent and literally life-changing product”
Ivan Hohanov, Head of UX
Providing a premium user experience should be one of the fundamental goals in any business sector. However, when it comes to the provision of medical services, often the achievement of this goal is the only possible option to provide some patients with a specific service, which can be explained either by temporary restrictions in mobility or by the presence of permanent mental or physical disabilities. This actually causes the need to create digital solutions according to the principles of simplicity, intuitiveness, and ergonomics.
It is noteworthy that medical personnel are no less in need of advanced user experience in healthcare software products, as they are often forced to act urgently in stressful situations and follow error-free decisions.
Key Principles of HealthTech UX Design
Let's look at a few fundamental principles underlying effective UX design for healthcare:
Accessibility: patients should be able to fully use the functionality of a particular digital solution, regardless of their physical and mental disabilities.
Conciseness: the user interface should not be overloaded – instead, it should demonstrate only those functions that the user currently needs.
Mobility: users must be able to access at least some of the services provided by a particular healthcare organization remotely.
Consistency: the functionality of a specific digital solution must be presented consistently and logically.
Control: user actions within a specific digital solution must be controlled to prevent errors.
Context: the interface of digital solutions must be context-sensitive so that users can intuitively perform targeted actions in it.
Best Practices in HealthTech UX Design
In this paragraph, we suggest that you consider a number of best practices that will help you bring HealthTech UX design to life.
Focus on the end user
Before you start working on a design, you will need to try to perceive it from the point of view of the end user to understand what possible problems they may encounter and what solutions will be optimal for them. Design thinking methods such as user research, as well as creating user personas and user flows based on surveys, personal data, etc., can help you with this.
Don't overload your screens
You should not place all the functions that have to be presented in your digital solution on the same screen. Instead, try to create a convenient, context-sensitive hierarchy and, according to it, divide the functionality into groups, placing each of them on a separate screen.
Create intuitive navigation
Your users must understand intuitively how to perform this or that action. Typically, the “rule of three” is used for this – that is, to complete a particular task, the user must complete no more than three steps. If this is not possible, make sure that your product contains clear and unambiguous hints leading to the goal.
Maintain balance
The visual component of your product also plays an important role: in particular, the user interface should look well-balanced, harmonious, and have a consistent style without being annoying.
Ensure compliance with data security standards and regulations
Make sure that while using your product, consumers cannot accidentally leak personal data (that is, every operation requiring their personal data must be performed by them consciously, after obtaining their consent). To do this, you will need to focus your design development process on FDA recommendations, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 62366.
Provide alternative control and navigation tools
Your users may have certain limitations in using the vast majority of digital solutions, so your main task will be to help them overcome them within your product. In particular, we are talking about ensuring product usability and accessibility by providing alternative navigation and control tools (for example, through voice input). More information on how to achieve accessibility in interaction design can be found in the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
Consider implementing responsive design
If you consider launching your solution on multiple platforms (for example, on mobile and desktop devices), you will need to implement a responsive medical app design that will scale the screens of this solution to the dimensions and orientation of a specific user device.
Base on user feedback
As you complete the prototyping stage and/or launch new versions of your ready-made solution, you need to collect feedback from real users and optimize the UX design in accordance with their complaints, needs, goals, and wishes.
Challenges Of UX Design For HealthTech
Along with following the principles described above, you should also understand what challenges you will have to overcome during the UX design implementation.
Bringing complex workflows into the digital plane
Many workflows in the healthcare sector are multi-step and require the participation of multiple parties. In this regard, one of the most difficult tasks of UX designers is to transfer them to the digital plane, accompanied by simplification and reducing the risk of errors. As for overcoming this challenge, most often, teams have to start their work on a project by creating its tree-like architecture - this is the easiest way to remove unnecessary steps and correctly group functionality that requires the same actions on the part of the end user.
Ensuring regulatory compliance
When designing a user interface, designers must take into account standards that ensure the protection of private user data and prevent its abuse. The same applies to providing accessibility for solutions that patients with disabilities can use. After work on the project is completed, it will need to obtain a certificate of conformity from an independent authority authorized to issue such certificates.
Data visualization
If a particular digital solution operates on large volumes of data and generates analytical conclusions based on them, UX designers may well encounter difficulties in presenting them in a simple and understandable form for the end user. Usually, this problem is solved by testing several visualization options: charts, line graphs, pie charts, etc., and choosing the one that seemed most convenient for the vast majority of respondents.
Final Thoughts
We hope that now, you understand the differences between the process of developing a UX design for a medical sector and the usual one. That’s why it’s so important when looking for a UX design healthcare contractor to turn to specialists who already have experience creating digital products in this niche. In particular, you can contact us, and we will bring your idea to life in accordance with all standards and regulations accepted in your region.
If you are working on a digital solution, one of its integral stages will be UX/UI design. While trivial projects usually have “beaten” paths for creating navigation and visuals, any deviation from the standard can lead to dissatisfaction among end users and increase the entry threshold for them. In this regard, no matter how sophisticated the logic of your project is, it is important to understand the usability principles maintained by human psychology to ensure its excellent user experience.
Theories of Perception in UX/UI Design
Generally speaking, there are several popular theories of perception in UX/UI design:
Gestalt psychology aimed at gaining an understanding of how people associate individual objects with things that are meaningful to them. The main gestalt principles include figure-ground (according to which some objects, depending on their visual appeal, are perceived as key navigation elements, while others serve as background), similarity (according to which elements with identical visual characteristics are perceived as interconnected), proximity (according to which closely placed objects are also perceived as related to each other), and closure (which states that incomplete objects, if sufficiently detailed, can be perceived by users as complete).
Affordance theory, claiming that to ensure intuitiveness, users should receive some cues from the interface from the very beginning on how to deal with a particular element – one way to do this is to use skeuomorphism;
Hick's Law, which states that the time it takes a particular user to make a decision is logarithmic to the number of available options (which means that to maximize intuitiveness, the user's choice should always be limited);
Fitts' Law, stating that the time it takes a user to reach a desired part of the interface depends on its size and distance (which means that to ensure a great user experience, you need to place interactive elements closer to the user's starting point);
Signal Detection Theory, claiming that users can subconsciously distinguish between meaningful cues (calls to action) and background noise, meaning that they should be visually separated.
Cognitive Load: Its Effects on UI Design
Now let's move from theory to practice and consider individual insights extracted from the above theories of psychology in UX.
In particular, the first insight is the minimization of cognitive load, that is, the efforts of the human brain that must be applied to perform a specific target action. Thus, the importance of reducing the amount of information or tasks provided to the user becomes clear – otherwise, there is a high probability that the user will begin to act erroneously.
In practice, such brevity can be achieved by correctly grouping interrelated elements and removing elements whose functionality duplicates each other.
Emotional Response & UX Design
Another valuable insight from UX design and psychology is to establish an emotional connection with the end user through your interface. This is a global task that begins with user behavior analysis and identifying their desires, pain points, and intentions and ends with transforming the obtained information into design elements that resonate with them.
Ultimately, you will have to walk in the shoes of the average consumer of your software solution to ensure the proper level of empathy with your emotional design. In terms of practical implementation of the emotional response, such user empathy can be achieved through the integration of “user experience stories” that can be presented by a service provider to users as they get acquainted with the digital solution, as well as the use of the right color palette, forms, audio, pop-ups, and text.
The Role of Memory in User Interaction
Since, according to cognitive psychology in design, the average person can concentrate on one object for up to 20-30 minutes, it is important to take this aspect into account if your software solution involves long-term interaction with it.
Specifically, you can reduce the load on your users' memory by implementing elements and scenarios that work and occur in a way that is familiar to them. Otherwise, if something does not function as expected, it can lead to users’ confusion and erroneous actions.
Understanding User Behavior Through Heuristics
Heuristics are specific UI design principles that can predict user psychology. Here are some of them:
Visibility of system status, which implies the importance of informing end users about what is happening with your software solution at the moment through progress bars, loading animations, or status messages;
Match between the system and the real world, which emphasizes the importance of correspondence between the system's behavior and the knowledge and experience that users received before they became familiar with your software solution;
User control and freedom, which implies the need to provide end users with the ability to freely navigate your software solution and manage negative scenarios;
Consistency and standards, which determine the significance of logical connections between elements, terminology, and layouts;
Error prevention, which consists of preventing erroneous actions by end users by providing them with unambiguous and understandable instructions;
Recognition over recall, which states that to ensure better intuitiveness, users should “recognize” familiar patterns from the real world in elements and scenarios of your interface.
Thus, you have to perform a heuristic evaluation to check whether your solution is good in terms of usability. Also, note that in reality, there are many more psychology UI design heuristics, but the above list will be sufficient for a basic understanding of what is meant by the term excellent user experience.
The Impact of Attention on User Experience
Many designers, in order to encourage the user to perform a particular action, abuse pop-up notifications and other features to attract attention, thereby increasing the cognitive load, the inadmissibility of which we have already discussed earlier.
Instead, you can use such approaches as the correct building of a visual hierarchy, optimization of the color palette, breaking down complex processes into several simple ones, etc. And, of course, do not forget to appeal to the memory of users, which already contains some experience of interaction with other digital solutions and can automate some processes of dealing with them due to the familiarity of the mental models implemented.
User Motivation & Reward Systems in UX/UI Design
Finally, from the point of view of UX psychology, many UX/UI designs benefit from gamification, which motivates users to move toward the target action. In general, gamification is aimed at boosting user engagement and creating an exciting user experience that they don’t want to interrupt. Its main elements are rewards and recognition.
At the same time, it is crucial to note that some reward systems are too confusing for the average user and, thus, create unnecessary cognitive load instead of motivation. Moreover, gamification is not considered a universal approach that could be used in any project. Therefore, you have to always start with the appropriateness and the affordance of implementing this concept clearly and simply for the consumer.
Conclusion
We hope that with the help of this article, you were able to understand the importance of UX design psychology and how it is implemented in UI/UX principles like heuristics, emotional response, lowering cognitive load, user motivation, and others. If you are interested in creating a digital solution that fully meets all these psychological principles, feel free to contact us.
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