Discover the essential strategies for enhancing healthcare software usability through expert insights outlined in this article. This comprehensive guide delves into the best practices for creating accessible and user-friendly digital health tools. Readers will gain valuable knowledge from industry specialists on how to prioritize a human-centric approach to design.
- Prioritize Human-Centric Design
- Ensure WCAG Compliance
- Implement Universal Design
- Adopt User-Centered Design
- Follow Inclusive Design Principles
- Embrace Design for Extremes
- Use User-Centered Design Approach
- Engage End Users Early
- Test with Non-Technical Users
- Focus on User-Centered Planning
Prioritize Human-Centric Design
I always ask myself how I can make our healthcare software solutions truly usable for everyone. Patients, providers, and administrative teams interact with technology differently, and that’s why my team and I prioritize human-centric design. This strategy ensures our solutions are accessible to all these groups alike. We actively engage end-users from different backgrounds—doctors, nurses, elderly patients, and individuals with disabilities—during requirement gathering and usability testing.
Their feedback helps us refine our solutions to be as practical and user-friendly as possible. Our tech team follows WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to ensure that our platforms are fully usable for individuals with visual, hearing, or motor impairments. Healthcare professionals face significant workloads, and the last thing they need is complicated software that hinders their efficiency.
So we design our interfaces with simplicity and clarity in mind, reducing cognitive load for providers while ensuring that even patients unfamiliar with technology can navigate with ease. Also, we believe language should never be a barrier to care. We integrate multilingual support into patient-facing apps to serve diverse patient populations. These strategies have helped us build intuitive and inclusive software that fits into the daily lives of those who use it.
Riken Shah
Founder & CEO, OSP Labs
Ensure WCAG Compliance
Ensuring accessibility and usability in healthcare software is critical because diverse user groups—including patients, clinicians, and administrators—interact with it in high-stakes environments. I prioritize a human-centered design approach that accounts for varying levels of technical proficiency, cognitive abilities, and physical limitations.
One key strategy is compliance with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and Section 508 standards, ensuring that our platform supports screen readers, keyboard navigation, and high-contrast visual modes. This is especially important for elderly patients or users with visual impairments who need clear, easy-to-read interfaces.
I also focus on intuitive UI/UX design—minimizing cognitive load through simple navigation, clear call-to-action buttons, and customizable settings. For example, in an EHR system, reducing the number of clicks required to input patient data significantly enhances usability for busy healthcare providers.
Another critical aspect is multi-language support and cultural sensitivity. Patients and providers come from diverse backgrounds, so offering localized content, translation options, and culturally relevant UI elements ensures a more inclusive experience.
Finally, extensive user testing with real-world stakeholders—from nurses to IT staff—helps identify pain points before deployment. We conduct usability testing sessions, gather feedback from accessibility advocates, and iterate continuously to refine the experience.
By embedding accessibility into every stage of development, we don’t just meet compliance standards—we create software that is truly usable, efficient, and inclusive for all.
Patric Edwards
Founder & Principal Software Architect, Cirrus Bridge
Implement Universal Design
First, you’ve got to design with the end user in mind-patients, clinicians, admins, all with different needs. A key move is universal design: build interfaces that work for everyone, from a tech-savvy 20-something to a 70-year-old with shaky hands. Think big, tappable buttons, high-contrast colors, and text that scales without breaking the layout. Screen reader compatibility is non-negotiable—tools like JAWS or VoiceOver need to navigate the software smoothly for visually impaired users.
Then, there’s multilingual support. Healthcare serves people who speak everything from Spanish to Mandarin, so embedding real-time translation or at least culturally tailored phrasing cuts barriers fast. Pair that with intuitive navigation-no one’s got time to hunt through menus, especially a stressed-out nurse mid-shift. A strategy here is user testing with diverse groups: run prototypes by elderly patients, non-English speakers, or people with motor impairments to catch friction points early.
On the tech side, responsive design is crucial. Software should flex seamlessly from a desktop in a clinic to a smartphone in a rural patient’s hand-think cloud-based platforms like Epic or Cerner, which prioritize this. Accessibility also means low-bandwidth optimization; not everyone’s on 5G, so compressing data without losing functionality keeps it usable in spotty-coverage areas.
Finally, training and feedback loops. Even the best software flops if users can’t figure it out. Short, clear tutorials—video or interactive—tailored to roles (doctor vs. patient) help, and a built-in feedback tool lets users flag what’s confusing. Data from that can refine the system over time.
Marc Bromhall
Founder, Chiropractor Hub
Adopt User-Centered Design
To ensure the accessibility and usability of healthcare software, especially for diverse user groups, several strategies are implemented:
1. User-Centered Design: Prioritizing user experience (UX) by designing intuitive interfaces that cater to the needs of various user groups, including patients, healthcare providers, and administrative staff. Clear navigation and easy-to-understand language enhance usability.
2. Accessibility Standards Compliance: Adhering to accessibility standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) ensures the software is usable by individuals with disabilities. Features such as screen reader compatibility, text resizing, and alternative text for images are integrated to support a wider range of users.
3. Multilingual Support: Offering the software in multiple languages helps cater to non-English-speaking users, ensuring better accessibility for diverse patient populations.
4. Mobile-Friendly Design: Given the rise of mobile device usage, healthcare software is optimized for smartphones and tablets. This flexibility ensures patients and healthcare providers can access critical information anywhere, at any time.
5. Training and Support: Providing comprehensive user training for both patients and healthcare providers is essential. Offering ongoing support through help desks or user manuals helps users of all technical skill levels understand and navigate the software efficiently.
6. Personalization Options: Customizable features, such as adjustable font sizes or color contrast settings, allow users to tailor the software to their specific preferences or needs, enhancing usability for people with visual impairments or other accessibility concerns.
7. Security and Privacy Considerations: To build trust, ensuring the software meets stringent security and privacy regulations (such as HIPAA in the US) is essential. Implementing secure authentication methods and ensuring patient data protection is vital for both healthcare providers and patients.
8. Feedback and Continuous Improvement: Collecting feedback from diverse users and incorporating their suggestions helps ensure the software evolves to meet the changing needs of the user base. Regular updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements contribute to long-term usability.
By using these strategies, healthcare software can become more inclusive, accessible, and efficient, benefiting all users regardless of their abilities or backgrounds.
Dr. Amarjit Virdi
Provider, The Pain Control Center
Follow Inclusive Design Principles
To make healthcare software truly accessible and usable for everyone, it’s important to follow inclusive design principles. This simply means thinking about features like screen reader compatibility for those with visual impairments, voice command options for users with mobility challenges, and high-contrast modes for people with low vision. It’s important to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Section 508 standards to ensure compliance with accessibility requirements. Testing the software with real users like patients, healthcare providers, and individuals with disabilities helps refine the interface, making it easier for everyone to navigate.
Also, language access is a big deal. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019, approximately 67.8 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home, so it’s important to offer multilingual interfaces and make health information easy to read. This ensures that everyone, no matter their background, can understand and use the software. By keeping all of this in mind, healthcare software can better engage with patients, improve their health outcomes, and help reduce disparities in medical care.
Dr. Jose Ayala
MD, Physician, Metro Urgent Care
Embrace Design for Extremes
We’ve embraced a “design for extremes” approach to ensure our platforms are accessible to all healthcare providers, regardless of their technical proficiency. This means designing interfaces that work equally well for a 65-year-old rural physician with limited tech exposure and a tech-savvy urban specialist.
Three specific strategies have proven particularly effective: First, we conduct regular shadow sessions where our team observes healthcare providers using our software in their actual clinical environment. This reveals real-world usability challenges that controlled testing might miss. Second, we’ve implemented an adaptive onboarding system that adjusts training complexity based on user behavior, offering more support to those who need it. Finally, we’ve built a Philippine-specific design system that accounts for local healthcare workflows, bandwidth limitations, and cultural nuances.
Our internal data shows that after implementing these approaches, we’ve seen a 35% improvement in our onboarding completion rates. What’s particularly encouraging is that we now see medical practices transitioning from paper-based systems to full digital adoption in as little as two weeks, whereas previously this process would often take several months.
Dennis Seymour
Head of Growth, SeriousMD
Use User-Centered Design Approach
To create accessible and usable healthcare software applications, a user-centered design approach is a foundation to consider different kinds of patients or healthcare providers with different levels of digital literacy. Specifically adhering to WCAG and Section 508 standards ensures that software is compliant as well as accessible for users facing visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments. Bold, high contrast colors, large fonts, clear navigation, and voice assistance make it easier for seniors and non-tech-savvy users. The platform has offered multilingual support and localization, enabling non-English speakers to navigate the platform more efficiently.
User testing in a variety of environments and with differing patients and providers facilitates improvement of the design through real world feedback and results. So accessibility becomes enhanced with assistive technologies like screen readers and voice commands while a mobile friendly, responsive design makes it convenient to browse and maintain a seamless experience across devices. Security needs to be robust but usable biometric logins and single sign-on (SSO) both preserve security without additional friction. Healthcare software needs to engage patients, physicians and other users, which is not possible without inclusively designing for the real world.
Nathan Barz
Financial Advisor, Management Expert, Founder and CEO, DocVA
Engage End Users Early
When I think about getting healthcare software to different user categories, there are three things that I am thinking of. First, I bring end users right into the fold early on in design, encompassing patients, caregivers, and providers with different backgrounds. Usually, through feedback from them, we can really design intuitive interfaces that deal with what is happening in the real world. Second, I observe that it is as simple as possible, where navigation is clear, and information is defined for simple understanding without being technical. Third, there is an array of our software-compatible aids like a screen reader or even voice recognition tools, making it really inclusive of people with disabilities. This makes it a really everyone-works kind of solution.
Dr. Gregory Gasic
Neuroscientist | Scientific Consultant in Physics & Theoretical Biology | Author & Co-Founder, VMeDx
Test with Non-Technical Users
A strategy that we use to make healthcare software more accessible is that the initial stage user tests with non-technical-love individuals, not only with physicians or administrators. Very often, the software is made with the perceptions of how users should interact with it rather than how they do.
For example, when developing a patient-facing app, we tested it with elderly users, non-native English speakers, and people with limited digital experience before finalizing the design. Seeing them struggle with small buttons, unclear icons, and medical jargon was eye-opening. We made simple but effective changes—better contrast, one-tap assistance, and plain language labels.
Another key strategy is designing for flexibility offering multiple ways to complete tasks. Some users prefer voice commands, while others need a step-by-step guide. By building in options, we make the software easier for everyone, not just tech-savvy users.
The biggest takeaway? Accessibility isn’t just about compliance—it’s about real-world usability. If a patient can’t book an appointment easily or a nurse struggles to log vitals, the software has already failed.
Vikrant Bhalodia
Head of Marketing & People Ops, WeblineIndia
Focus on User-Centered Planning
Our approach to strategic planning for long-term success centers around being deeply user-focused and purpose-driven. We anchor all our decisions to our mission: simplifying healthcare workflows so practitioners can spend more time on what matters: caring for their patients. Through this, we ensure our strategies are informed by real-world needs and evolving trends in healthcare.
One specific way this has guided successful outcomes is in how we prioritized the development of integrated telehealth features. Early on, we noticed a growing demand for virtual care tools from practitioners, especially during the pandemic. Instead of simply reacting to the market, we engaged with our users to understand the specific challenges they were facing like the need for seamless scheduling, secure video calls, and note-taking in one platform.
We also started localizing our content late last year. Bridging barriers by making the platform and resources in a number of languages is another way to show immense support towards a more diverse user base. Circling around these insights, we planned and implemented a telehealth solution that not only addressed these needs but also aligned with our long-term vision of creating an all-in-one healthcare platform.
Jamie Frew
CEO, Carepatron
