Beyond the App: Designing for Real-World Adoption

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in medtech is that a well-designed app isn’t enough. In regulated healthcare settings, you’re not just designing for patients - you’re designing for how the solution will be introduced, integrated, and supported within the clinical environment itself.

Clinics aren’t uniform. Each one has its own workflows, hierarchies, tools, and timing. Some still rely on paper records, others are fully digital. Some have rehab nurses who lead patient education, others delegate it to physiotherapists or admin staff. This diversity makes it impossible to create a one-size-fits-all implementation model.

For a small startup with limited resources, that’s a serious challenge. Customizing onboarding, data integration, or support flows for each clinic slows down scaling, even when patient demand and product readiness are high. You can try to base your implementation model on one or two pilot clinics - but there will always be a healthcare provider that “does it differently.”

That’s why we didn’t just design the patient experience. We also designed:

• Flexible implementation flows based on real clinical setups

• Onboarding toolkits that could be customized with minimal effort

• Conversations with stakeholders early in the process - not just to “sell” the product, but to co-design the rollout

If we don’t design for the context of care, we risk creating solutions that never leave the pitch deck.