What Impact Does a Good UX Create in Healthcare Technology?
Post-pandemic, more people are becoming comfortable with using healthtech applications. Hence, a rich user experience (UX) design is paramount. It enables greater adoption of healthcare technology, such as:
- Electronic health record (EHR)
- Remote patient monitoring
- Web and mobile applications like a patient portal
- Medical billing software
- UI-based medical devices
Healthcare UX is a design practice. It ensures seamless interaction between people and healthcare technology systems. A good healthtech UX design enhances:
- Accessibility
- Usability
- Consistency
- and learnability
With a user-centric design, healthtech systems address critical and life-saving user pain points. They enable better healthcare for doctors, patients, and care providers.
Moreover, healthcare organizations are now becoming more attentive to UX design requirements. This allows care facilities and patients to achieve their objectives effectively.
This article discusses the impact of UX in healthcare. We'll also discuss some latest healthtech UX trends. Let's begin!
Table of Contents
➥ What is a Bad User Experience in Healthcare?
➥ Good UX Design Considerations in Healthcare Technology
➥ 5 Modern Trends in Healthcare UX
⇒ Healthcare Virtual Reality Applications
⇒ Healthcare Voice User Interfaces (VUI)
➥ Build Healthcare Technology With High-Quality UX Design
What Is a Bad User Experience in Healthcare?
Every day, you can witness miracles happening at the hospitals. Babies are born, successful organ transplants occur, and cancer patients recover. But, most people complain about their poor healthcare experience and patient care.
Most of the time, It's not due to lousy healthcare professionals. But, technical healthcare protocols that support these medical professionals are often erroneous.
Healthcare professionals should spend more time treating patients–than butting heads with technology. Critical healthcare data must be available to clinicians at all times. Otherwise, patient care could be adversely affected. In hospitals, this can occur due to complicated Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.
Moreover, people get frustrated due to faulty or cumbersome healthcare applications. For instance, consider a healthcare application designed for older people. The application is available on a device not common among the elderly, like an iPad. It would have zero usability for elderly folks. Or if a digital outpatient appointment application is faulty. It can overlap the doctor's appointment schedule. It may fail to accommodate the patient load. As a result, expect some angry patients. Such applications lead to poor healthcare user experiences.
Good UX Design Considerations in Healthcare Technology
The healthcare industry has a broad user base. As a result, it is difficult to determine what makes an effective UX design. The aim is to cater to most audiences which can be virtually anyone. They can be adults and senior citizens, rich or poor, literate or illiterate. Moreover, people can have visual and auditory impairments. Hence, healthcare UX design must pay special attention to inclusivity.
Most digitally integrated healthcare applications like an EHR have three main components:
- Patient portal
- Doctor portal
- Healthcare administrator module
Each component caters to a different user base. An intelligent healthcare UX strategy streamlines all relevant capabilities for each component. As a result, the healthtech system provides a seamless experience for each user.
Let's list down some more healthtech UX design considerations below:
- Healthcare UX design should always be intuitive with simple user interface navigation
- Availability of different text size options or adjustable text to accommodate reader preference
- Availability of color or theme variations to increase the visual appeal
- Clarity of language and icons
- Support for local and regional languages, particularly in remote or rural areas
- Text-to-speech for people with visual impairment
- Soon the future will be paperless. That means no clunky administration or management of healthcare records
- Automating healthcare processes such as:
- doctor appointments
- cancellations
- tests scheduling
- admissions
- discharges, etc., to reduce process latency and human error
- Multiple billing modes for various patient preferences
- Accessible mode of communication between patient and doctor using in-app calls or messages
- Centralized patient record management
- GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA compliance to ensure patient safety and privacy
- Timely access to patient information, including diagnosis, scans, and pathology reports
- Ubiquitous access to healthcare information
- Collecting patient feedback about clinicians, care providers, or facilities
- Provide clear tutorials or training to improve healthcare apps familiarity
- Finally, healthcare UX should be adaptable to changing technological advancements
5 Modern Trends in Healthcare UX
Modern healthcare UX design improves end-users convenience. It saves them valuable time and effort. Moreover, the latest medical technology prioritizes personalized experiences. McKinsey research suggests that a personalized care journey reduces readmissions and healthcare costs.
Some of these tech-enabled personalized experiences are:
- Healthcare Wearables
- Medical Chatbots
- Healthcare Virtual Reality Applications
- Healthcare Voice User Interfaces (VUI)
- Digital Therapeutics
Let's discuss in detail how these modern trends impact healthcare UX.
1. Healthcare Wearables
Wearable technology is gaining global traction. The global wearable market will reach $380.5 billion by 2028. Wearable devices generally include:
- Smartwatches
- Wearable monitors
- Fitbits
Most commonly, this wearable technology is available as wristwear. More advanced healthcare features are available in headwear, eyewear, bodywear, and footwear devices. These devices track user data, including health and fitness information. And this information generally includes physical attributes like height and weight. Moreover, these devices record various health metrics, including:
- Heart rate
- Blood pressure
- Respiratory rate
- Temperature
- ECG monitoring
- Fall detection and more
2. Medical Chatbots
Many industries use smart AI-powered chatbots to enhance their customer success journey. To improve healthcare UX, Chatbots provide many functionalities, including:
- Handling preliminary patient queries
- Scheduling medical appointments
- Checking disease symptoms
- Managing insurance claims
- Offering personalized diet plans and much more
Chatbots reduce patient waiting times for straightforward queries. Businesses can save hiring and training costs for maintaining large customer support teams. Moreover, chatbots can scale to link the entire healthcare network of an organization.
3. Healthcare Virtual Reality Applications
Virtual reality applications provide innovative and immersive user experiences for doctors and patients. They provide engaging visual experiences.
Doctors frequently perform complex VR-assisted surgeries. They either use VR to practice surgical procedures. Or they use VR during the actual procedure to increase the chances of success.
On the patient side, a VR-based healthcare app helps treat mental disorders, including:
- Fear
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Traumatic events using guided visual therapies
4. Healthcare Voice User Interfaces (VUI)
Healthcare VUI is the future of personalized, independent, and accessible healthcare. They are useful, especially for disabled and older people. Particularly, VUIs are helpful in home care situations or remote patient monitoring. Most common examples include voice-activated personal assistants like Alexa and Siri.
With a more patient-centric approach, VUIs can perform critical healthcare tasks, such as:
- Answer patient questions
- Send SOS alerts to family and friends
- Assist users with their exercise routines
Moreover, physicians can use a medical listening device to record patient conversations. These recorded conversations act as clinical notes to support diagnoses and decision-making.
5. Digital Therapeutics–AI-Assisted Healthcare Products for Diagnostics and Support
Digital Therapeutics or DTx is a relatively emerging category of medicine. It's a healthcare app designed to clinically intervene, treat, and manage various diseases. DTx aims to improve UX in healthcare.
For instance, Dario enables self-monitoring of glucose levels for diabetes patients. They can get real-time coaching to maintain better health. Another DTx application, Daylight, helps patients reduce clinical anxiety within a few weeks. Freespira is another effective DTx product helping patients with PTSD or panic disorder.
Build Healthcare Technology With High-Quality UX Design
The healthcare industry is undergoing rapid modernization. 5G integration and a greater cloud adoption rate are leading this transformation. But, without an inclusive UX in healthcare, this transformation will be challenging. High-quality UX anticipates users' needs to make informed healthcare decisions.
Moreover, a well-defined user experience reduces the significant number of medical errors. These errors generally go unnoticed. At times, they are not accurately reported or mixed with other incidents. A 2016 John Hopkins study puts medical error as the third-leading cause of fatalities. The study suggests that in the US alone, medical errors amass 250,000 deaths yearly. Hence, a well-designed UX can help bring down this number.
Nextfiniti has extensive experience in building high-quality digital healthcare products. Our healthtech solutions offer a rich user experience. Our engineers and UX design experts are well-versed with healthcare industry trends. They work with global digital healthcare providers to implement standard UX design practices.
Start your digital transformation journey and enhance the digital health of your customers. Contact us today!