1. Replace Assumptions with Evidence
Innovators often assume what healthcare professionals or patients need, leading to misdirected features and poor engagement. It is important to really get to know and understand your users. Conducting user studies will uncover their motivations, requirements, the use environment and even their capabilities and limitations. Utilising the appropriate formats, tools, and techniques will enable you to tailor your chosen user study accordingly to suit the stage and scale of the project and any defined criteria. These can involve contextual inquiry, shadowing and Day In The Life (DITL) studies to uncover real-world clinical complexity and user frustrations.
2. Build Feedback Loops into Development
Just as PwC highlights the power of agile, test-and-learn cycles in pharma, it is imperative to embed iterative usability testing and closed-loop insight to ensure continuous product refinement. Usability engineering can take many forms before the device itself resembles something feasible; this could be in terms of lab test process, clinical pathway, user interaction and logistics. This will evolve as the product development continues, and collective understanding of the user requirements deepens. Moving through prototype phases is vital for identifying issues early and resolving them before they become costly or insurmountable. This approach ensures that results of any early user testing, known as formative evaluations, can be fed back into the design through iteration. This not only results in a more robust product which doesn’t progress down the wrong path for too long but also helps to align stakeholders with the development process.
3. Align Product with Clinical Pathways
It is important not to overlook the importance of planning a robust development roadmap, which incorporates user and product requirements, user workflows, risk management, and how these elements are interlinked with the crucial clinical trial phase. Misalignment between product design and clinical evaluation can lead to compliance issues and poor adoption. By mapping user workflows against clinical pathways – through the definition of clear product requirements, considered user workflows, a solid risk management strategy and an iterative approach – you can better identify integration points that reduce friction and accelerate uptake.
4. Break Down Silos
As well as aligning processes, it is important not to overlook stakeholder alignment. Effective workflow development requires inter-departmental alignment and cross-functional collaboration. Greenlight Guru’s 2025 Medical Industry Benchmark Study recently shared that ‘One in three companies report their quality management efforts are siloed, and the larger and more mature the company, the worse the silos and related problems’. They also specify that ‘companies who reported being highly collaborative are six times more likely to meet their quality objectives, demonstrating the importance of breaking down silos’.
Interdisciplinary alignment, from engineering and regulatory teams to clinical and user experience teams, ensures that every stakeholder is engaged from concept to launch, promoting collaboration, accelerating development, and minimising costs.
5. Drive Adoption Through Experience-Led Design
There is a definite trend in companies moving from a product-centric to experience-centric approach. In their article from product to customer experience: The new way to launch in pharma, McKinsey states that “focusing too narrowly on clinical value often leads companies to neglect a powerful driver of launch success: the customer experience”.
Innovation must be intuitive and usable. Shifting focus from “best molecule” to “best journey” will help you design modular, frictionless solutions that resonate with users and deliver measurable impact.