The world of healthcare delivery is changing.
In recent years, there’s been a movement away from a fee-for-service model to a value-based care approach. This transition has influenced the industry-wide adoption of digital technologies that facilitate care delivery and improve the patient experience.
And this movement toward digital technologies and tele-health services was only accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it’s more important than ever for healthcare providers to seek out new methodologies to improve the healthcare user experience.
Below, we’ve detailed five ways they’re doing so.
What Is Healthcare UX?
Healthcare UX relates to the experiences patients have when encountering healthcare technologies and services. Whether it’s a medical device or an online portal, it’s vital that patients are able to intuitively utilize the tools available to them.
Although UX designers can’t guarantee that patients will be satisfied with the product, they can influence them in a positive direction by optimizing the device’s usability and accessibility.
Put simply, everything needs to be designed with the user in mind.
So, how can you improve these efforts? We recommend the following actions:
- Promote transparency – One of the most common patient complaints is a lack of clear communication surrounding their medical care. It’s also one of the leading causes of medical errors, poor patient outcomes, and hospital readmissions. The more healthcare companies can embrace a model of open dialogue and transparency, the better both the user and the patient experience will be.
- Understand the problems you wish to solve – For healthcare companies still in the early phases of product development and ideation, avoid simply building a service around a vague idea that it will somehow deliver value to patients. Instead, work backward by understanding the problems patients have and then identify solutions that solve those issues.
- Keep user’s choices simple – Studies show that choice paralysis is a common issue that leads to a poor user experience, especially when it comes to healthcare delivery. When users have too many options, it can be difficult to choose the best one, especially as it relates to complex medical topics that can directly impact their health. Whether it’s an app, a medical device, or your website, avoid overwhelming users (particularly first-timers) with too many menus, options, pages, etc.
- Establish your authority – The healthcare environment naturally requires patients to put their health in the hands of the doctor, device, or pharmaceutical intervention. With their well-being at stake, the experience can be frightening. Therefore, if you provide a product or service that requires a user to lend their trust, it’s essential that you do everything in your power to establish your authority and experience while fostering an environment of transparency. This can be done in several ways, including:
- Creating and sharing high-quality content
- Posting your credentials
- Ranking highly on search engine results pages
- Make the data easy to understand – Although this could technically fall under the auspices of clear communication, it deserves its own section. Put simply, the vast majority of patients aren’t medical experts. They will have a difficult time understanding medical jargon and data. Therefore, it’s important to translate data into layman’s terms and to organize it in such a way that the first things they see are actionable insights.
Semgeeks—UX Centered Design
Your company’s website is likely the first place potential healthcare users will visit to conduct their initial research. So, when it comes to your healthcare-related website, it’s paramount that you apply the UX strategies discussed above to your web design and practices.
Everything you can do to promote transparency, champion clear communication, and simplify choice optionality will make for a better user experience.
To that end, do you need help navigating the changing landscape of the healthcare user experience? As a web design agency in New Jersey, we have the web development and marketing experts your team needs to build out a website that’s optimized for a fantastic user experience.
Ready to get started? Reach out to us today.
Sources
AHRQ. Improving Patient Safety Through Provider Communication Strategy Enhancements. https://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/advances2/vol3/Advances-Dingley_14.pdf
Pub Med. When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a good thing? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11138768/
