As a design team, we have unknowingly become an expert in designing the user experience for healthcare software.

Intended or not, many of our  projects focus on some aspect of the healthcare space. Checklist apps for service providers. Back-office software to eliminate wait times and help veterans. Commercial software for a major healthcare providers patient records and business. Myself and many of our development team came from a company that creates healthcare enrollment software. We understand 835 forms and ICD-10 codes. We understand how to move a user through a 14 page form and make them not hate it… too much. Over the dozen related projects, we’ve accumulated domain knowledge in a space that’s complex and confusing.

And building this software varies greatly from our other projects. There’s never anything easy. Never. Nothing in healthcare is as simple as it sounds. And everyone’s business process is different.

We were reviewing one such project with the design team yesterday when it struck me:

User experience is the barrier to entry for effective healthcare software.

Not just software, the industry itself is overwhelmingly complex. And why? I can figure out my sons medical bills from a minor operation – 4 months later I received 4 additional bills from different providers with no context. And that’s one simple operation. Healthcare systems seems to revel in their complexity. How does any of this benefit the consumer or the user of the software? And how does continuing to design for this complexity help create a positive user experience?

IF the goal of “design” is to take something complex, understand it, and make it simple for the user  – are we doing this? Are we creating a positive user experience, or are we just adding one more layer to the cake.

So now that we’ve recognized the opportunity, where do we go with this thought? Focus back on the user experience. How can we improve their experience? How can we reduce complexity of a complex system? Make it smarter. Make it easier to navigate. Make the experience of completing a form more enjoyable. As designers how can we understand and remove these barriers to entry? How can we create a better healthcare experience through better software?