Digital Health Design.org
Design breakdowns

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Visual breakdowns of healthcare design decisions - how specific standards apply in practice, why each choice matters, and what to consider.

Showing 17 of 17 breakdowns

Start here WCAG 2.2 · SC 1.4.1 RPM alert card An alert queue that only turns a row red doesn't tell a colour-blind clinician which patient needs attention first. Remote patient monitoring Read the breakdown →
WCAG 2.2 · SC 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) Tap targets under 24px fail real hands on real phones - health apps get used one-handed, on the move, under stress. Accessibility & health literacy Read the breakdown → NHS design system · Component The error summary A form that fails silently fails twice. The error summary is the cheapest accessibility win most health forms still skip. Accessibility & health literacy Read the breakdown → Evidence review · Lab result display Humanising the number A lab value is data; a person reading it is worried. Good dashboards close that gap without lying about it. Patient portal & EHR Read the breakdown → GOV.UK · Content style Write to a reading age Health content read by a stressed person at a low reading age is a design constraint, not a nice-to-have. Plain words are an accessibility feature. Accessibility & health literacy Read the breakdown → UK GDPR · Consent Consent, not coercion A consent screen that nudges "yes" and hides "no" is not consent. In health, where the data is intimate, the dark pattern is a trust breach. Remote patient monitoring Read the breakdown → WCAG 2.2 · SC 1.4.1 Status is never colour alone Red-for-bad works until you cannot see red. Every status needs a shape or a word riding alongside the colour. Accessibility & health literacy Read the breakdown → ISMP + CDC · Safe dose display Write the dose the patient reads, not the dose the chart stores A decimal point or an unfamiliar abbreviation on a clinician's chart is routine. The same text on a patient's phone is how a dose gets taken wrong. Accessibility & health literacy Read the breakdown → Evidence review · Patient trend chart Patient trend chart When a patient reads their own vital-sign trend, a plain bar or number-line view with a visible reference range tests better for comprehension than a clinical-style line chart. Remote patient monitoring Read the breakdown → Usability study · Clinician dashboard Clinician RPM dashboard A denser dashboard is not a more useful one: when a clinician has to scan many patients at once, the design that wins is the one that shows less, labels it plainly, and puts the most urgent case where the eye lands first. Remote patient monitoring Read the breakdown → Patient safety alert · Alarm fatigue Alert fatigue When every alert looks and sounds the same regardless of urgency, clinicians tune out the one that matters along with the rest - tiered, differentiated alerts are the documented fix, not simply adding more alarms. Remote patient monitoring Read the breakdown → WCAG 2.2 · SC 3.3.8 Accessible sign-in A password field that blocks pasting turns a login into a memory test - exactly what this rule exists to stop. Patient portal & EHR Read the breakdown → WCAG 2.2 · SC 3.3.7 No re-typing the same data Asking a patient to retype their address on step four when they typed it on step one is a design choice, not a technical necessity. Patient portal & EHR Read the breakdown → WHO patient safety · Medication list Medication reconciliation A medication list assembled from three different records isn't reconciled until a clinician can see where each entry came from and exactly what conflicts with it. Patient portal & EHR Read the breakdown → Evidence review · Lab result list Lab result list A results screen that lists many values at once has to do a different job than explaining one value: it has to let a patient spot the one result that needs attention without reading every row. Patient portal & EHR Read the breakdown → WCAG 2.2 · SC 1.4.1, 1.4.3, 1.4.11 Reading status A reading status tells the reader whether a measured value is normal, high, low or missing, using a shape and a word as well as colour. ComponentRemote patient monitoring Read the spec → Screen · Alert fatigue + WCAG 2.2 SC 1.4.1 Clinician RPM queue One screen built from four published breakdowns: the same six alerts, ordered by what needs a person first. ScreenRemote patient monitoring Read the screen →