Making it Work:
A Practical Guide to Usability
Testing in HealthTech

Making it Work:
A Practical Guide to Usability Testing in HealthTech

Let’s be honest, when was the last time you used a healthcare app that felt effortless, where everything just worked the way you expected? Chances are, it’s been a while.

Poor usability in healthcare technology isn’t just frustrating—it’s dangerous. Studies show that usability issues contribute to nearly 70% of medical errors in electronic health record (EHR) systems alone. When clinicians struggle with unintuitive interfaces or cumbersome workflows, the consequences aren’t just inefficiency; they can lead to real patient harm, regulatory penalties, and wasted resources.

So why is usability testing (UT) in HealthTech still treated as an afterthought?

For most teams, the challenge isn’t understanding why usability is important—it’s figuring out how to test effectively within the constraints of healthcare environments.

Also, unlike consumer apps, HealthTech products must account for strict compliance (HIPAA, GDPR), complex user roles (doctors, nurses, admin staff, patients), and high-stakes decision-making. Traditional usability testing playbooks don’t always apply here.

That’s where this guide comes in.

TABLE OF CONTENT

1Why Usability Testing Matters for HealthTech Products 2Usability Testing in
HealthTech: A Different
Ball Game 3Designing
and Conducting
Usability Tests 47 Remote Usability
Testing Software for
Your Product 5Analyzing Results &
Implementing Findings

We’ve designed this as the go-to resource for UX and product teams working specifically in B2B HealthTech. You’ll find:

Healthcare-specific usability testing strategies—because what works for an e-commerce checkout won’t cut it for a clinical decision support tool
Templates and checklists to help you plan, execute, and document usability tests with minimal guesswork
A roadmap for recruiting real healthcare users while respecting privacy laws and professional constraints
Adaptations for testing with busy clinicians—so you don’t disrupt their workflow while gathering meaningful insights

Whether you’re refining an EHR interface, designing a patient portal, or optimizing an AI-powered diagnostics tool, this guide will help you conduct usability tests that lead to safer, smarter, and more effective HealthTech solutions.

Let’s get right to it.

Why Usability Testing Matters for HealthTech Products

If you’ve ever watched a clinician struggle with a cluttered EHR interface or seen a patient give up on a telehealth app after multiple failed login attempts, you’ve witnessed the cost of poor usability in healthcare technology.

Unlike in consumer tech, where bad UX leads to churn or low adoption, poor usability in HealthTech has far more serious consequences. A study by MedStar Health found that complex, unintuitive EHR interfaces have led to critical delays in patient care, with some systems requiring up to 4000 clicks per shift for a physician to complete routine tasks. When workflows are this inefficient, it’s no surprise that usability problems contribute to medical errors, increased clinician burnout, and regulatory risks.

The Cost of Bad UX in HealthTech

Poor usability isn’t just an inconvenience; it has tangible consequences:

Medical errors: A 2020 study in the Journal of Patient Safety reported that usability-related issues in computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems contributed to nearly 40% of medication prescribing errors.
Clinician burnout: The American Medical Association (AMA) reports that 62% of physicians cite administrative burden, largely driven by poorly designed digital tools, as a major factor in burnout.
Inefficiency and lost revenue: A report from the National Academy of Medicine highlights that inefficient health IT systems contribute to billions in wasted healthcare spending annually, as clinicians spend more time wrestling with software than providing patient care.
Compliance risks: HealthTech products must meet strict regulatory standards (HIPAA, ONC, FDA). Poor usability can lead to incorrect data entry, security lapses, or workflows that don’t align with compliance guidelines.

Why General UX Best Practices Aren’t Enough

Usability testing is at the heart of effective UX design. In fact, it is a significant step in the final stages of the design process, which allows you to verify assumptions, back up research, and avoid unexpected setbacks or surprises right before moving to development.

In one of our projects, we took up redesigning a lab analytics tool, the user testing exercise revealed how readability and affordance (possible actions that the user can take) were making it difficult for users who were color blind. This was vital to course-correcting the design and setting the right priorities for development.

Many companies assume that following standard UX principles is enough to ensure a seamless HealthTech experience. But usability testing in healthcare demands a different approach. Unlike typical B2B software, HealthTech products must:

Accommodate a wide range of users- from highly trained physicians to administrative staff and even patients with limited digital literacy.
Function in high-stakes environments where speed and accuracy are critical- delays or errors aren’t just frustrating; they can be life-threatening.
Comply with strict privacy and security regulations- every usability test must be conducted without violating HIPAA or exposing sensitive patient data.
Fit seamlessly into clinical workflows- doctors and nurses don’t have time for steep learning curves, and usability tests must reflect real-world constraints.

Without usability testing tailored to these unique challenges, HealthTech teams risk designing software that looks good on paper but fails in practice.

Usability Testing in
HealthTech: A Different
Ball Game

Running a usability test for a HealthTech product isn’t just a matter of booking participants and observing workflows. It's a balancing act between understanding deeply varied users, working within tightly regulated environments, and protecting sensitive patient data. Unlike other industries where usability testing is mostly about convenience and conversion, here, it’s about clinical accuracy, safety, compliance, and human well-being.

Let’s break down how usability testing in healthcare deviates from the norm—and how to do it right.

Identifying Key User Groups

Most industries can segment users relatively easily—by job title, purchase behavior, or demographics. In healthcare, it’s not so straightforward. A single digital product might serve an ecosystem of users, each with drastically different needs and levels of expertise.

Clinicians (doctors, nurses, specialists): Focused on speed, accuracy, and avoiding medical errors. They often work under high pressure.
Administrative staff: Tasked with data entry, billing, compliance, and patient coordination, usability can make or break their productivity.
Payers and insurers: Require clarity in documentation, eligibility, and claims processing interfaces.
Patients and caregivers: May have low digital literacy, physical impairments, or cognitive limitations. They need interfaces that are intuitive and accessible.

According to a 2021 survey by Stanford Medicine, 49% of clinicians reported that EHR usability issues significantly interfered with patient care delivery. That’s not just a UX problem—it’s a system-wide issue with direct clinical consequences.

How to account for varying tech literacy levels

Use pre-screening questionnaires to assess comfort with digital tools.
Tailor test scripts to match the participant’s role and experience level. A cardiologist and a home caregiver need very different framing.
Observe, don’t assume. Don’t let personas guide your expectations entirely—watch how actual users engage with the product.

Recruiting Participants While Ensuring HIPAA Compliance

Recruiting participants in HealthTech isn’t as simple as posting a call on LinkedIn or usertesting.com. You're working in a regulated landscape, where privacy laws like HIPAA (U.S.), GDPR (EU), and sometimes IRB approvals come into play.

Key Legal and Ethical Considerations

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) prohibits the use of real patient data in test environments without proper anonymization.
IRB (Institutional Review Board) approvals may be required if your usability testing crosses into research (especially if you’re testing with patients).
Informed consent is non-negotiable. Test participants must know what they’re signing up for, how data will be used, and that they can opt out at any time.

Recruitment Strategies That Protect Privacy

Use role-based scenarios. Instead of involving real patients, recruit clinicians to simulate patient interactions using dummy profiles.
Anonymize all test data. Strip out any identifying information, including usernames, patient IDs, and voice/video data (if recorded).
Use intermediaries like research coordinators, practice managers, or patient advocacy groups to help recruit participants without breaching trust or regulations.

Check out HIPAA-Safe Usability Testing Checklist

Download Now

Setting Clear Objectives

Too often, usability testing turns into a fishing expedition, looking for problems without a clear sense of what success looks like.

For example, a HIMSS usability report reveals that over 70% of clinicians say it takes too many clicks to perform routine EHR functions. This is a usability red flag that speaks directly to efficiency and, ultimately, burnout.

In HealthTech, clarity is everything. Because you're testing mission-critical systems, you need defined usability goals and measurable KPIs.

8 Healthcare Applications and Key UX Metrics to Measure

Insurance Platforms

METRICS

Claims Submission Success Rate
Measures the percentage of users who successfully submit a claim through the platform. This metric indicates the platform's effectiveness in facilitating the claims process and reducing friction for users.

Application Completion Rate
Measures the percentage of insurance applications initiated by agents that are successfully completed through the platform, reflecting the efficiency and usability of the application process.

Policy Management Ease
Assesses the ease of managing policies for users, including activities like policy endorsement, policy upgrade/downgrade, policy renewal, or generating quotes, ensuring a smooth workflow.

Task Completion Time
Measures the time taken by employees to complete specific tasks related to policy management, claims processing, or risk assessment, aiming to streamline workflows and increase productivity.

Information Accessibility
Measures the ease of accessing relevant policy information, coverage details, or underwriting guidelines, ensuring agents can quickly find the information they need to serve policyholders.

Care-Delivery Systems

METRICS

Appointment Scheduling Success Rate
Track the percentage of successful appointment bookings to evaluate the ease and effectiveness of the scheduling process.

Patient Engagement
Measures metrics like active usage, frequency of logins, or engagement with self-care tools to gauge patient involvement and empowerment.

Task Efficiency
Measures task completion time for common provider activities like accessing patient records, updating care plans, or communicating with patients to identify bottlenecks or areas for improvement.

Care Coordination Efficiency
Track the time taken to coordinate services or assign tasks among healthcare providers to identify potential areas for streamlining andreducing delays.

Patient Outcomes
Measure patient outcome metrics, such as readmission rates or health improvement indicators, to evaluate the effectiveness of care coordination efforts.

Telehealth Providers

METRICS

Virtual Appointment Success Rate
Measure the percentage of successfully conducted telehealth appointments to assess the effectiveness of the appointment scheduling and virtual visit process.

Number of Telehealth Consultations
This metric reflects how frequently telehealth services are being utilized. Tracking the volume of telehealth consultations helps understand the demand for virtual care, identify trends, and assess the overall utilization of the telehealth platform.

Ease of Connection
This metric tracks the simplicity of initiating a telehealth consultation for both clinicians and patients. It focuses on the ease of joining a virtual visit, establishing a reliable connection, and minimizing technical hurdles or connectivity issues.

Adoption Rate by Modality
This metric tracks how quickly and broadly different telehealth modalities are adopted by healthcare professionals and patients. It provides insights into the acceptance and adoption of specific modalities, helping guide resource allocation, training efforts, and service expansion.

Patient Access Platforms

METRICS

Appointment Booking Success Rate
Measures the percentage of successfully booked appointments to evaluate the ease and effectiveness of the scheduling process.

Health Record Access
Track metrics related to accessing health records, such as time to find specific records or navigation success rates.

Information Accessibility
Track metrics related to the ease of accessing patient information, success rates in finding relevant records, or efficiency in navigating the system.

Task Efficiency
Measure the time taken by providers to complete common tasks like reviewing patient information, updating care plans, or communicating with patients.

Electronic Health Records

METRICS

Patient Access Time
Measure the average time it takes for patients to access their health records or other critical services. Delays may point to system inefficiencies.

Readability Score
Analyze the readability level of patient-facing text in the EHR system. High complexity could hinder understanding and usability for patients.

Cognitive Load
Through user interviews or surveys, assess the mental effort required by healthcare providers to use the EHR system. A high cognitive load can reduce productivity and increase the likelihood of errors.

Report Generation Time and Error Rate
Measure how long it takes to generate necessary reports. Longer times may indicate system inefficiencies. Also Track the number of errors or rejections in billing submissions. High error rates could suggest usability issues.ts.

Pharmacy Management System

METRICS

Prescription Processing Time
Measure the time taken to process prescriptions from receipt to dispensing to assess efficiency and workflow optimization.

Medication Dispensing Turnaround Time
Measures the time taken from prescription order entry to medication dispensing. This metric evaluates the efficiency of the system in managing the dispensing process and ensuring timely access to medications.

Prescription Error Rate
Measures the frequency and severity of errors in prescription orders processed through the system. This metric provides insights into the accuracy and effectiveness of the system in minimizing prescription-related errors.

Training Time
Measures the time required for users to become proficient in using the Pharmacy Management System. This metric helps evaluate the system's learnability and user-friendliness, ensuring a smooth onboarding process.

Billing and Practice Management

METRICS

First-Pass Resolution Rate
Track the percentage of claims paid on the first submission. Lower rates could point to system issues or inaccurate data entry.

Claim Processing Time
Measures the average time taken for claims to be processed and reimbursed by payers. This metric assesses the system's efficiency in handling claims, impacting cash flow and provider revenue.

System Responsiveness
Measure the system's responsiveness, including page load times, search functionality, and overall system performance. This metric assesses the system's speed and responsiveness, ensuring a smooth and efficient user experience during revenue cycle management tasks.

Payment Posting Accuracy
Tracks the accuracy of payment posting and reconciliation within the system. This metric evaluates the system's ability to accurately record and match payments to corresponding claims, reducing errors and ensuring proper accounting.

Laboratory Information Systems (LIS)

METRICS

Data Retrieval Time
Measure the time taken to retrieve patient data, test results, or laboratory reports. This metric assesses the system's responsiveness in providing quick access to critical information.

Data Consistency
Evaluate the consistency and integrity of data exchanged between the LIS and external systems. This metric ensures that data shared between systems remains accurate, consistent, and synchronized.

User Error Rate
Track the frequency and severity of user errors while interacting with the LIS. This metric helps identify areas of the system that may cause confusion, increase the likelihood of errors, or require additional user training or interface improvements to enhance usability and reduce user-induced errors.

Discover why top HealthTech teams trust our UX research approach.

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Sample Usability KPI Tracker

Track usability metrics of your product that align with your clinical and operational goals.

Designing
and Conducting
Usability Tests

Running usability tests in healthcare isn’t as simple as setting up a few Zoom calls and watching users click through a prototype. The stakes are higher, the constraints are stricter, and the users—whether they’re clinicians, administrators, or patients—are often operating under real-world pressures. A poorly designed usability test can lead to misleading results, wasted time, and ultimately, a product that fails in the real world.

So, how do you conduct usability testing in a way that respects healthcare workflows while delivering actionable insights?

Choosing the Right Testing Method

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to usability testing in HealthTech. The method you choose should depend on the user group, the testing environment, and the type of insights you need.

Conducting Usability Testing Without Disrupting Healthcare Workflows

One of the biggest challenges in HealthTech usability testing is ensuring that the process itself doesn’t interfere with real-world patient care. Clinicians, caregivers, and administrative staff are already working in high-pressure environments where every second matters. A poorly designed usability test—one that runs too long, disrupts routines, or fails to reflect actual healthcare settings—won’t just be ineffective; it could be outright ignored.

Here’s how to conduct usability testing without adding friction to already demanding healthcare workflows.

Scheduling Usability Tests Without Disrupting Patient Care

Healthcare professionals do not have the luxury of free time. They operate in a world of back-to-back patient appointments, unpredictable emergencies, and critical decision-making under pressure. If a usability test feels like just another meeting on their calendar, participation will be low or rushed.

To maximize participation and get meaningful insights, timing is everything:

Keep it short and focused.
Clinicians don’t have an hour to spare for a usability session. Stick to 20–30 minute tests that focus on a few key workflows rather than trying to evaluate an entire system at once.

Schedule during non-peak hours.
Avoid patient-heavy times, such as early morning rounds or peak clinic hours. Shift changes and end-of-day periods tend to work better.

Be flexible and accommodate constraints.
Caregivers and patients—especially those with mobility or cognitive challenges—may require additional time or special accommodations, such as accessibility tools or remote testing options.

Offer asynchronous options.
If real-time testing isn’t feasible, consider self-guided usability tests where participants record their interactions and provide feedback later.

A usability test that respects participants’ schedules is far more likely to yield honest, useful insights.

Simulating Real-World Use Cases Without Compromising Privacy

In healthcare, context is key. A nurse checking vitals in a calm patient room interacts with an EHR differently than a physician documenting an emergency in a chaotic trauma bay. Testing in controlled lab conditions often fails to capture these nuances, leading to false confidence in a system’s usability.

To ensure realistic testing:

Account for the Observer Effect (Hawthorne Effect)

People behave differently when they know they’re being watched. In a hospital setting, this is even more pronounced, as compliance expectations and regulatory oversight already put professionals on high alert.

Use passive observation where possible.
Instead of sitting beside a user with a clipboard, consider using screen recordings, session analytics, or retrospective interviews.

Encourage natural workflows first.
Let users complete tasks without guidance before discussing what worked and what didn’t. Leading them too much can invalidate findings.

Test in the Right Environment

An interface that works well in a quiet office setting may fail spectacularly in an ER with background noise, patient alarms, and time pressure. Conduct tests in actual work environments whenever possible.

For hospital systems
Test with doctors and nurses in real clinical spaces, even if it means observing them on a mobile workstation.

For home healthcare apps
Consider remote usability testing with real patients or caregivers in their natural settings.

Minimize Cognitive Bias

Healthcare professionals—especially those who are highly trained—often hesitate to critique a system in front of its creators, either out of politeness or professional culture.

Use a neutral moderator
A UX researcher with no personal stake in the product design will elicit more honest feedback than the software’s developers.

Phrase questions carefully
Instead of asking, “Do you like this feature?”, ask, “How would this fit into your workflow?” or “What would make this task easier?”

Usability tests should reflect how people actually work, not how designers assume they do.

Using Dummy Data and Sandbox Environments

Real patient data is off-limits. HIPAA regulations and privacy laws prohibit using real medical records for usability testing, meaning UX teams must rely on simulated patient data. However, many teams make the mistake of using oversimplified or unrealistic test data, which can lead to misleading results.

To ensure a test environment that mirrors reality:

Use a sandbox environment that mimics real-world data complexity.
Many EHR and HealthTech vendors provide staging environments with anonymized test patients.

Include realistic edge cases.
A system may work perfectly for a healthy, single-diagnosis patient, but how does it handle:
- A patient with multiple chronic conditions and overlapping medications?
- A duplicate patient record that needs to be merged?
- A scenario where a doctor is paged mid-task and needs to resume. quickly?

Observe workarounds.
Many clinicians develop unofficial shortcuts to bypass inefficiencies in a system. If your usability test doesn’t account for these, you may miss critical pain points.

By simulating real-world constraints—time pressure, interruptions, and complex data—usability testing can surface issues that might otherwise go unnoticed.

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7 Remote Usability
Testing Software for
Your Product

While in-person usability testing is recommended whenever possible, since it’s easier for moderators to observe users in their environment, it has been considered logistically difficult in the era of social distancing. However, considering that the alternative might be skipping the exercise altogether, remote testing is always preferable. Remote usability testing has always been the go-to method in cases when budget or time constraints did not allow for in-person testing.

UXArmy

UXArmy is a comprehensive tool that gathers qualitative and quantitative data and collates it in the form of screen interaction videos, surveys, and graphic visualizations. Designers and researchers can make use of the UXArmy platform to collect remote feedback on the usability of their designs.

With a panel of 25000+ verified testers, it is easy for product teams to pick a group that best matches their target users. Their usability testing tool is effective in terms of budget and time. It offers both moderated and unmoderated usability tests, along with card sorting and tree testing.

Find out more about their plans and subscriptions here.

Usertesting.com

Usertesting.com is one of the oldest, most trusted user testing tools in the industry. It has now expanded its offerings to a bouquet of service design experiences for product managers and marketers, besides UX professionals. With a sizeable panel of users based across the world, usertesting.com boasts the fastest turnaround time from its user panel. Its Human Insight platform is a video-first platform where you can see and hear the experiences of real people as they engage with your products, designs, apps, processes, concepts, or brands. It offers pre-formatted tests and same-day video interviews designed to get you real customer feedback within a matter of hours.

They have different subscription models for individual and enterprise products and experience trials. Check them out here.

UserZoom

Quite like usertesting.com, UserZoom has been in the market for far too long now and has a devoted user base. It assists with user-focused decision-making on product strategy, information architecture, and UX and CX questions at every stage of product development.

UserZoom Go is the low-cost version of the product that offers both unmoderated usability testing and seamless moderated interviews. The original UserZoom, on the other hand, is geared towards larger, enterprise products that depend on research at scale in various departments of the organization.

Find more details on their packages and pricing here.

Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop brings up an array of tools catering to information architecture, user research, and UX design. However, its specialty is running information architecture tests.

Besides these, it also has dedicated usability test types such as card sorting, tree testing, and first-click testing. It assists in the recruitment and targeting of users across 70+ languages, either remotely or in person.

Another standout feature of Optimal Workshop is that their free plan lets you explore all of the functions of their various tools. Find more information on their offerings here.

Userlytics

Userlytics boasts a global panel of over one million usability testing participants from around the world. Their remote usability testing tools feature a Picture-in-Picture (PiP) system, which is helpful in sighting non-verbal contextual insights and information from the participants.

Additionally, Userlytics results are reviewed by a dedicated QA team to ensure quality results. This tool is especially useful for teams that have very specific needs based on ethnography and demographics.

Details on their tools and pricing can be found here.

Maze

Maze is a rapid testing platform that is centered on quantitative usability metrics. Designers can import prototypes from Adobe XD, Figma, InVision, Marvel, or Sketch with seamless integration.

Their remote usability testing tool includes tests for path analysis, heatmaps, along with card sorting and tree testing. An insightful usability test report is generated instantly for each test.

Find out more about their plans and subscriptions here.

UsabilityHub

UsabilityHub describes itself to be the Swiss Army Knife of user research, and it’s quite true. This remote user research platform helps run different types of research tests, such as first-click tests, design surveys, preference tests, and five-second tests to identify usability issues.

The platform has a built-in participants panel with over 170,000 testers available on demand. There is also a provision to invite your own users to participate in the test.

Their reporting features, like click visualizations, open text analysis, and task duration metrics, are especially useful to smaller product designers and individual testers.

Information about their pricing and bundles can be found here.

Analyzing Results &
Implementing Findings

Conducting usability testing is only half the battle—the real value comes from how effectively you analyze and act on the results. HealthTech software presents unique challenges, from complex workflows to stringent compliance requirements. A well-structured approach to categorizing issues, presenting findings to stakeholders, and implementing iterative improvements ensures that usability testing leads to meaningful product enhancements.

Evaluating Usability Issues

Not all usability problems are equal. Some are minor annoyances, while others can disrupt workflows or even compromise patient safety. Categorizing them based on their severity helps teams prioritize fixes without getting lost in the details.

Categorizing Issues Based on Severity

Common Usability Pain Points in HealthTech

If you’ve worked in HealthTech, you’ve probably seen at least one of these problems in action:

Overloaded dashboards- Too much data crammed into a single screen, making it impossible to scan quickly.
Unclear workflows- Users struggle to find the next step in multi-step processes like prescription refills or patient discharge.
Data entry bottlenecks- Too much manual input because of missing integrations or intelligent defaults.
Alert fatigue- Clinicians get so many notifications that they start ignoring them—even the critical ones.
Session timeouts- Strict security policies force automatic logouts, disrupting tasks midstream.

These aren’t just usability issues; they can have real-world consequences. The key is knowing how to frame them in a way that gets attention and leads to action.

Check out Sample Usability Testing Report

Download Now

Presenting Findings to Stakeholders

You’ve identified the issues—now it’s time to get decision-makers on board. The way you present usability findings can make or break whether they actually get addressed.

How to Structure a Usability Testing Report

A great usability report isn’t just a list of problems—it’s a clear, structured argument for change. Here’s what to include:

Key findings upfront
A high-level summary of the most pressing usability issues.

Severity ranking
Group issues into critical, major, and minor categories.

Real user pain points
Include direct quotes or short clips from usability sessions. Seeing a doctor struggle to find a vital function is far more powerful than a bullet point saying, “hard to locate feature.”

Proposed solutions
Don’t just present problems; offer actionable fixes based on usability best practices.

The business case
Translate usability issues into real-world impact: time wasted, increased errors, compliance risks, and user frustration.

Making a Business Case for UX Improvements

To get leadership and product teams to act, speak their language. Frame usability issues as business risks and opportunities:

Efficiency Gains: Simplifying patient intake can save nurses several hours per week—time that can be redirected to patient care.
Reducing Errors: Improving data entry workflows could cut down on medication errors, reducing liability risks.
Regulatory Compliance: Enhancing accessibility can help meet WCAG 2.1 standards, avoiding potential ADA-related complaints.

Numbers help. If usability changes can reduce task time by 20% or improve accuracy by 30%, those stats will make your case more compelling.

Check out Usability Testing Findings and Action Items

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Iterative Improvements & Post-Testing Actions

Usability in HealthTech is an ongoing process—workflows evolve, regulations change, and users’ needs shift over time. That’s why iterative improvements and follow-up testing are essential. The goal isn’t just to fix usability problems but to continuously refine the user experience to ensure better adoption, efficiency, and safety.

Here’s how to systematically improve usability post-testing:

1. Prioritize Fixes Based on Business and User Impact

After analyzing usability test results, you will likely have a list of issues to address. However, not all problems require immediate action. Prioritize fixes based on:

User impact – Does this issue prevent clinicians, administrators, or patients from completing critical tasks?
Business risk – Could this problem lead to compliance violations, security risks, or inefficiencies that impact revenue?
Technical feasibility – How complex is the fix? Can it be implemented quickly, or does it require larger system changes?

Tips

Use a prioritization matrix
Categorize issues into high, medium, and low priority based on severity and business risk.

Align with product roadmaps
Work with developers and product teams to integrate fixes into upcoming
sprints.

Communicate quick wins
If minor usability fixes can be rolled out quickly, implement them first to show immediate improvements.

2. Validate Fixes Through A/B Testing

Once fixes are implemented, it is important to test whether they actually improve usability. A/B testing allows teams to compare the new design with the existing one to measure its effectiveness.

Example: If users struggled with a complex medication ordering process, test a streamlined version against the original.

What to measure:

Task completion time
Error rates
User satisfaction scores
Drop-off rates for multi-step workflows

Tips

Recruit the same or similar user group
Ensure that feedback comes from those who will actually use the system.

Keep variables controlled
Change only one major element at a time to isolate the impact of the new
design.

Monitor real-world behavior
If possible, track usage metrics after rollout to validate whether improvements persist over time.

3. Plan Follow-Up Usability Testing

Fixing usability issues should not be a one-time effort. Follow-up testing ensures that solutions work as expected and do not introduce new problems.

Types of follow-up usability testing:

Short-term testing (1–2 months after changes):
Check if fixes are solving the original pain points without creating new usability hurdles.
Long-term testing (6–12 months later)
Assess whether improvements have led to sustained efficiency gains and better user adoption.

Tips

Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)
Track task completion rates, user errors, and satisfaction over time.

Gather qualitative feedback
Conduct brief interviews or surveys with users post-implementation to uncover
any lingering challenges.

Benchmark against past results
Compare new usability test findings with previous ones to measure
improvements.

4. Implement a Continuous Feedback Loop

Beyond scheduled usability testing, ongoing feedback collection helps catch emerging issues before they become major problems.

Ways to gather continuous feedback:

In-app feedback tools
Allow users to report usability frustrations in real time.
Regular user check-ins
Schedule quarterly or biannual calls with key user groups, such as clinicians and administrators.
Support ticket analysis
Review help desk tickets for recurring complaints related to usability.

Tips

Create a user advisory panel
Engage a small group of clinicians, IT staff, and patients to provide ongoing usability insights.

Automate data collection
Use heatmaps, session recordings, and analytics to identify patterns in user behavior.

Establish a usability governance process
Assign a dedicated team to track usability metrics and ensure improvements
are continuously made.

5. Foster a Culture of Usability in Product Development

The best usability improvements happen when usability testing is embedded into the product development lifecycle rather than treated as a one-time activity.

Key strategies:

Train cross-functional teams on usability best practices
Educate developers, designers, and product managers on common usability
pitfalls in HealthTech.

Incorporate usability testing into agile sprints
Run small-scale tests with real users before each major release.

Advocate for usability at leadership levels
Use data-driven reports to demonstrate how improved usability enhances operational efficiency and compliance.

To conclude

It is a well-known fact that Jeff Bezos invested 100 times more in usability testing than in marketing in the first year of launching Amazon. It has been studied that the initial research on user patterns has been the key to Amazon’s success over the years. Amazon has an incredible conversion rate and exceptionally high customer retention. It is safe to believe that following usability standards and testing is a key process for the success of any product or service today.

This is the perfect place to reiterate an important usability mantra - you are not your user. This is what makes usability testing arguably one of the most important tasks for designers and product managers. Usability testing is key to uncovering details of how real people respond to products and experiences.

Table of Content

User-Centric, Scalable Solutions
That Are Secure & Compliant

EHR

Practice Management

Health Plans & Benefits

Healthcare Accessibility

Telehealth Integration in EHR to Assist Overburdened Providers

Improved patient care by merging safety, communication, and real-time tools for providers:appointment alerts, pre-visit patient review, and live translation/transcription.