Best healthcare UX design agencies for clinical software: an honest shortlist

For clinical and care software, choose a healthcare UX design agency by the kind of health product it can show you, in a published case or under NDA, not by fame. Thirteen firms meet that bar. Each sits under the situation it fits best, in alphabetical order, and none is ranked above the others:

• Clinician workflows and EHR-adjacent tools: Fuselab Creative, GoInvo and Koru UX Design.
• Patient- and family-facing products: Conduct, G&CO. Health and IDEO.
• Medical device and regulated software: Creative Navy and Orthogonal.
• One team to design and build: HTD Health, MindSea, Momentum, Sidebench and Tcules.

Disclosure. We publish this shortlist and appear in it ourselves, as one of the five firms that design and build.

The shortlist at a glance

We did not compare prices: they depend on scope, and each firm quotes its own.

How we chose

We started from the eighteen firms Google, ChatGPT and Gemini named as the best healthcare UX design agencies for clinical software, and from four healthcare agency lists published by Eleken, Fuselab Creative, G&CO. and Wavespace, each of which ranks its own publisher first. We added GoInvo and MindSea from our own research, and ourselves. A firm is listed if it meets two criteria, applied to every firm, us included:

1. Health or care software capability: work on a clinical, care or regulated health product, not a hospital marketing site, that shows the problem, the users or roles, and what the firm did. Confidential work a firm will walk you through under NDA counts as much as a published case. We could check only published work, so ask each firm for the rest.
2. Health product design as a stated service or focus.

Location, build, regulatory claims and Clutch profiles inform but decide nothing. Read recent reviews on each firm's Clutch profile, and ask for a reference you can call. Every regulatory or certification statement below is the firm's own claim: ISO itself does not issue certificates, so check an ISO 13485 claim with the certification body or in IAF CertSearch. Outcome figures are each firm's own, or a client's estimate, unless the entry says how they were measured.

Google's answer named Momentum Design Lab but cited the site of Momentum, a different company in Wrocław; we could not find a readable clinical or care case on Momentum Design Lab's site. Before you contact a firm an AI answer named, check which firm it meant. We did not assess the 35 other firms named in our sources, which is no judgement of them. The design principles behind the criteria are in our guide to healthcare UX design for clinicians, patients and regulators.

Best for clinical workflow and EHR-adjacent software

For when the people using the product are clinicians or clinical staff, and the difficulty sits in their workflow: reviewing, coding, documenting or handing over.

Fuselab Creative

Best for: clinician-facing and data-heavy health tools where a US-based team matters.

Fuselab's healthcare page lists clinical software, medical device interfaces, research platforms, patient portals and dashboards. Its Radiology Queue case designs an X-ray review platform with separate paths for specialists and technicians, for providers who confirm a diagnosis and message the clinic, and for management staff in an admin panel, with annotation tools, a cardiothoracic ratio flow, and AI-assisted measurement that keeps manual measurement. The client is unnamed and no result is reported.

• Regulated context (its claim): it designs software-as-a-medical-device interfaces to "meet IEC 62366 human factors and FDA usability validation requirements", and lists accessibility audits against federal and international standards.
• Check before you hire: which people worked on the radiology platform, and whether they would work on yours.

GoInvo

Best for: clinical and health-information workflows where the design team needs to learn the work inside the hospital.

GoInvo describes itself as a design studio that ships software for enterprise and healthcare leaders. Its CodeRyte case covers hospital medical-coding software built around natural language processing: the team went into hospitals to learn the work, made more than 15 prototypes, rewrote the coding panel three times on coders' daily feedback, and did interface engineering during implementation. GoInvo's results section reports a 200% gain in coding efficiency at Memorial Hermann Hospital, while the body of the case gives it as an unnamed hospital customer's conservative estimate.

• Regulated context (its claim): "HIPAA, FDA, payer, and federal constraints are our starting conditions, not a late surprise."
• Check before you hire: the case is undated, so ask for recent clinical work and references.

Koru UX Design

Best for: teams with large EHR or clinical platforms who want an embedded design team.

Koru calls itself a healthcare UX design agency for product teams and offers embedded design teams. Its EHR case, a summary with the full case as a download, covers a four-year redesign and cloud migration of an unnamed clinician-facing EHR. Koru says it scaled a team of 50 designers working with more than 120 product and engineering stakeholders, and turned an embedded transcription tool into a standalone AI product. The page describes scale more than method and reports no measured outcome.

• Regulated context (its claim): its team knows HIPAA and HL7, and it lists healthcare accessibility; the pages we opened describe no FDA or usability-engineering process.
• Check before you hire: ask to see the research and testing behind an EHR case, and who from that team would work on yours.

Best for patient- and family-facing products

For when the main users are patients, families or the public, and the hard problems are understanding, trust, anxiety and getting people to use the product at all.

Conduct

Best for: patient and clinician apps where research, design and build stay in one small team, especially for Australian health organisations.

Conduct describes itself as a healthcare UX design and technology partner for Australia's insurers, hospitals and clinical software providers, designing health products since 2008. Its Okee case for the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne covers a game-based app that prepares children for imaging: observing procedures, interviewing staff, surveying families and clinicians, testing game concepts, then design and build. Conduct says the hospital ran a research project after release, and reports an average six-minute cut in preparation time per patient and a 40% fall in compliance difficulties during imaging.

• Regulated context (its claim): its HMR referrals case, a referral platform for GPs and pharmacists, says the platform adheres to the Australian Digital Health Agency's secure messaging specifications.
• Check before you hire: the imaging case is undated and the referral case does not set out Conduct's design role, so ask for recent clinical work and who did what.

G&CO. Health

Best for: consumer health and telehealth journeys for larger organisations, where experience strategy leads.

G&CO. describes its healthcare practice as strategists, designers and technologists working where healthcare meets digital innovation. Its Hims & Hers case covers the consumer journey from consultation to prescription: journey mapping and information architecture, UX and UI, and recommendation flows for the site and app. G&CO. describes its role as consulting and contributing thinking alongside a partner, says platform components were developed with a confidential collaborator, and reports better engagement, retention and conversion without figures.

• Regulated context (its claim): adherence to HIPAA, GDPR and other healthcare laws.
• Check before you hire: ask which parts of the Hims & Hers work it designed itself, and for clinician-facing work if that is your product.

IDEO

Best for: new patient-facing products where co-design with users and clinical grounding come first, and a partner builds.

IDEO runs a health practice that designs experiences "for patients, care teams, and businesses". Its Soluna case for Kooth covers a mental-health app for 13 to 25 year olds in California and a platform for clinicians, peer specialists and social workers: co-design with young people, a clinical oversight group including a paediatrician and therapists, a proof of concept within nine weeks and a one-week pilot with 50 young people. IDEO reports that 94% of proof-of-concept users would recommend the app, and that 6 million young people had access at launch in January 2024; access is not use. The platform was developed with its development partner, Blackbird.

• Regulated context: the health pages we opened make no human-factors, FDA or HIPAA claims; the case mentions working through state requirements.
• Check before you hire: who builds, who maintains after launch, and how clinical review continues once the design team leaves.

Best for medical device and regulated software

For when the software is, or is part of, a medical device, and the design work has to feed a usability engineering file and a quality system.

Creative Navy

Best for: device and embedded interfaces where IEC 62366 usability engineering shapes the design.

Creative Navy designs "mobile experiences, web interfaces and GUI for embedded devices". Its ultrasonic cutter case for deSoutter Medical covers about three months on an operating-theatre interface that surgeons use, the case says, with their non-dominant hand and through gloves: an IEC 62366 requirements analysis, 13 sessions with eight surgeons, a review of twelve human factors studies, gloved-hand prototyping, a design system and a usability engineering trail, handed over to the client's engineers. Its listed outcomes are delivery claims, such as a first clickable prototype in three weeks.

• Regulated context (its claim): it lists "Compliance with ISO 62366 and IEC 62366-1" as an outcome, while the body of the case says the documentation "aligns with" IEC 62366 expectations.
• Check before you hire: how its deliverables fit your design controls, and whether the people from the surgical case would work on yours.

Orthogonal

Best for: software as a medical device and connected-device apps that need design, human factors and engineering inside a quality system.

Orthogonal says it builds, evolves and scales software as a medical device (SaMD) and connected device systems, with UX design and human factors alongside medical device software development. Its human factors page favours small, early user tests that "set the stage for more formal (and expensive) formative and summative tests." Its EBT Medical case covers iOS and Android apps for a wearable nerve stimulator for overactive bladder, still awaiting market authorisation: guided-use tutorials, a questionnaire that helps confirm placement, stimulation adjustment and usage history, built with risk assessment, test-driven development and several app versions for a clinical trial. It reports no usability or clinical metrics.

• Regulated context (its claim): "Orthogonal's Quality Management System is certified by BSI to ISO 13485:2016", and its Agile processes are described as compliant with IEC 62304, AAMI TIR:45 and ISO 14971.
• Check before you hire: the cases we opened lean towards engineering, so ask for one where it led the UX and human factors work.

Best when one team should design and build

For when you want the same firm to carry the design into working software, including integrations. Conduct and Orthogonal also build, so ask every firm where its work stops.

HTD Health

Best for: health platforms where strategy, product design and a large engineering team should come from one firm.

HTD Health describes itself as "a strategy and technology consultancy dedicated to healthcare transformation", lists human-centred product design alongside software development, and gives the size of its engineering team on its About page. Its Premier Neuroscience Institute case covers a patient app with wearable integration and in-app testing, a research platform on which researchers set up studies with drag-and-drop tools, and the cloud data architecture behind them; it describes the build more than the design and gives no figures. Its Vave Health case says it led usability testing of a physician-facing app for a handheld ultrasound device, after developing the app.

• Regulated context (its claim): its About page shows ISO 27001, ISO 27018 and ISO 13485 logos without saying what they cover.
• Check before you hire: its public cases show the build more than the design, so ask to be walked through design work on a clinical product, under NDA if need be, and who would lead it.

MindSea

Best for: patient apps with a clinician dashboard, designed and built by one healthcare-focused team.

MindSea calls itself "a healthcare development team building apps for real-world care". Its CHARM-COPD write-up, a blog article rather than a formal case, covers remote monitoring for people with COPD with University Health Network, Sunnybrook and the University of Toronto: a patient diary app with clinician chat, and a clinician dashboard with batch review and alerts. MindSea built a UX blueprint with the research teams, ran face-to-face usability testing with people living with COPD, applied WCAG guidance, built the app and the dashboard, and connected hospital sign-in. The project was still in development and testing.

• Regulated context (its claim): it handles protected health information with appropriate safeguards, aligns with Ontario's PHIPA and SOC 2 principles, and signs business associate agreements when required.
• Check before you hire: ask for a launched clinical product, since the COPD work was still in development.

Momentum

Best for: patient-facing health apps that also need health-data engineering, such as FHIR or wearable integrations.

Momentum describes itself as a healthcare software and AI development company with a product design and strategy service. Its LabPlus case covers iOS and Android apps for booking, paying for and reading the results of more than 1,000 medical tests: discovery workshops, paper prototypes tested with five patients, plain-language test descriptions, and results explained with normal ranges and next steps, then the build. Momentum says the project "transformed a day-long process into minutes", without saying how that was measured. It also publishes open-source tooling for FHIR and wearable data.

• Regulated context (its claim): its homepage shows an ISO 13485:2016 logo without certificate details and "100%" beside "HIPAA-compliant architecture"; the LabPlus case describes PCI-DSS-compliant payments.
• Check before you hire: LabPlus is patient-facing, so ask for clinician-facing work if that is your product.

Sidebench

Best for: family- and patient-facing apps that need research, design and integration work from one partner.

Sidebench calls itself a UX design, mobile app and custom software development company, and lists HIPAA compliance among its services. Its Baby Steps LA case for Children's Hospital Los Angeles covers an app that helps families move from the neonatal intensive care unit to home: observation in clinical and social services, focus groups with parents and caregivers, care mapping, personas and journey maps, then an app with hospital content, baby profiles and checklists. Sidebench reports 17,000 families supported, more than 30,000 downloads and a 4.7-star patient satisfaction rating, which it lists as clinical outcomes.

• Regulated context (its claim): its Clutch profile says it is "HIPAA trained and certified company-wide", with production experience in Epic and FHIR integration.
• Check before you hire: the case details the research but not the build, so ask who would design and who would engineer your product.

Tcules (publisher of this page)

Best for: clinical and care software in which several roles with different authority act on one record.

Our health product work is confidential, so we have no named health case to link; we will walk you through it under NDA, against the same criteria. Our closest public case is outside healthcare. In about thirteen months inside Chestnut, an insurance platform through which carriers pay their agents, we made payouts say when they need recalculation or are blocked and made overrides carry a reason and an audit trail; we also wrote part of the front end ourselves and reviewed features against the designs as they arrived. Our health product page shows how we keep evidence, its interpretation and the right to decide distinct on screen.

• Regulated context (our claim): none of certification, HIPAA compliance, a regulatory submission or a clinical outcome; your clinical, legal and regulatory owners set the controls we design within.
• Check before you hire: ask which roles the confidential work served, what we decided and built, and who would work on yours.

Questions that settle the choice

Hold every candidate to these, us among them; a portfolio will not answer them for you.

• [ ] Which clinical roles have you designed for? Name them in a case you can show: nurse, coder, radiologist, pharmacist, carer, patient. "Healthcare experience" is not an answer.
• [ ] Can you walk us through confidential health work under NDA? Ask for the work closest to your product, and judge it as you would a published case.
• [ ] How do you find and handle use-related risk? Which tasks could cause harm through a use error, and what did the design change when you found one?
• [ ] Have you worked inside a quality-management or usability-engineering process? If your product is, or may be, a medical device, ask what the firm's deliverables look like in your design history file.
• [ ] Who decides the regulatory questions? Your clinical, legal and regulatory owners decide classification and controls; a good firm asks for them early and designs within their decisions.
• [ ] Where does your work stop, and who checks what ships against the design?
• [ ] Which of your case figures were measured, and by whom? Separate a hospital's own study from a firm's estimate.
• [ ] Who will do the work, and can we speak to a clinical client whose product resembled ours?

Between two finalists, give both the same consequential moment from your product, such as a result that needs a clinician's review, and compare the questions they ask before they design anything.