Designing Healthcare that Puts Patients at the Center of the Experience
Over the years, our teams have been working closely with healthcare organizations, engaging with analysts, and participating at key conferences including HLTH USA alongside leading healthcare visionaries. One big theme we continue to see ring true is, “The future of healthcare will be human-led, AI-powered, and consumer-driven.”
It is very apparent that the era of passive healthcare is over. The industry is primed for reinvention. Leaders are moving beyond technology as a stopgap and are instead leveraging AI to redesign processes, rebuild infrastructure, and modernize the foundation of healthcare itself.
The organizations that will thrive are blending responsible AI, human‑centered design, and value‑led processes to make healthcare simpler and more personal, and that will ultimately drive better health outcomes.
From benefits enrollment to care navigation, reinvention isn’t about integrating more technology throughout the patient or member experience. After all, not every healthcare organization is ready for every innovation. Rather, it’s about using technology to enable healthcare professionals to get back to what they do best, delivering care and improving health outcomes.
AI That Amplifies Human Engagement
AI is real, measurable, and deeply human when done right. It’s freeing clinicians, reducing burnout, and giving patients faster, smarter support. In a recent Bounteous survey of marketing and technology leaders, every enterprise reported using AI in some capacity today. While healthcare ranks lowest in AI maturity among industries, adoption is underway and delivering impact. Ninety-two percent of organizations report expected or better than expected ROI, with particularly strong gains in predictive analytics, marketing, and sales.
In healthcare and among our clients, significant cost pressures are compelling organizations to rethink their operational strategies to improve care delivery. While we’ve been talking about AI as it relates to healthcare for a while now, we're now starting to see real results. AI is unlocking practical, step-by-step improvements that create immediate value. By reducing administrative burdens and simplifying workflows, AI is giving healthcare professionals more time to focus on what matters most, including human connection, patient interaction, and caregiving.
For example, AI‑assisted initial care plan recommendations, discharge planning, and bed‑flow predictions are reducing variability and improving speed-to-care. Ambient listening, documentation support or “smart notes,” and AI-based guides free clinicians to spend more time with patients and reclaim caregiving as their primary function, restoring their joy in practicing medicine. Thoughtfully applied automation can reduce friction for clinicians and patients alike.
Summaries and next‑best‑action guidance help nurses, care managers, and therapists prepare for high‑stakes conversations without hours of manual review. In benefits and navigation, models trained on claims and engagement signals steer members to relevant resources, reducing confusion and shrinking ticket backlogs for HR teams. The common thread is a human in the loop, transparent guardrails, and success measured in better conversations, faster resolutions, and actions taken at the point of need.
Teams are using assistive and agentic AI patterns to expand capacity, close gaps in prevention and chronic care, and reduce avoidable specialty referrals. Advanced primary care models, whether virtual‑first, on‑site for concentrated workforces, or hybrid across distributed teams, integrate behavioral health, pharmacy, and social support with value‑based incentives. The result is a system that meets people where they are while lowering the total cost of care.
In a webinar in 2024 with Becker’s Healthcare, we explored how leveraging AI can relieve constraints on healthcare systems, improve care delivery, and drive better health outcomes.
Human-Centered Design that Builds Trust
Design matters. Never has that been more apparent than it is in healthcare now. Human-centered design is the bridge between tech innovation and true healthcare transformation. According to Forrester, health insurers need to embrace the human experience to drive down costs and bolster wavering member trust.
Trust is more than a compliance checkbox. Consumers’ expectations have been shaped by the ease of retail experiences, and healthcare providers specifically need to think about how to put members first in the design. This includes designing for zero friction, cutting steps wherever possible, delivering value before multi-factor authentication logins, and defaulting on choices that boost completion. We’ve seen consumer-grade design principles come to life in our work with a leading retail pharmacy client, where integrated digital experiences translate into engagement and loyalty.
From the work we’re doing with our healthcare clients and the conversations we continue to have, we know that healthcare innovation will be defined by personalized, connected, and trustworthy experiences that put people at the center of their healthcare journey. Empowering individuals to own their data and define their digital health experience is one of the most critical steps in this transformation. Shifting the ownership of data to the patient will build trust that in turn drives behavioral change. Learn more about the importance of data quality in foundational work for digital transformation in this webinar we hosted with HLTH and athenahealth.
Leaders are also emphasizing transparency as it relates to AI usage, so people understand when automation is helping and what data is being ingested. Employers and plans are leaning into consent, clarity about data boundaries, and governance with every workflow. These secure, transparent, and personalized frameworks will help build and maintain trust at scale.
The organizations that build trust over time won’t just ship dashboards; they’ll deliver actionable insights and share the outcomes that those insights enable. Empowerment through transparency and consent builds the trust needed for engagement. When trust is designed into the experience, adoption follows. And in the case of healthcare, adoption and behavioral change is critical to improve health outcomes.
Optimal Channel Communication that Drives Personalization at Scale
Messaging is no longer a marketing afterthought; it is a key part of care delivery. Leading organizations are replacing omnichannel communication with “optimal channel,” respecting preferences and sending fewer, smarter messages. Preference-aware communication (right channel, right time) will beat “spray and pray” omnichannel communication any day of the week. Missed reminders can result in missed care, and the stakes can’t really be any higher than that.
Personalized communication across the member and patient journey now includes intelligent reminders that accept replies for rescheduling or questions, reducing no‑shows and patient frustration. Verified messaging, adaptive authentication, and two-way communication flows that escalate concerns safely provide the confidence patients need without adding friction. These smarter, conversational approaches lower costs, improve satisfaction, and make experiences more human.
In addition, we know people increasingly search for healthcare answers through generative AI tools, including ChatGPT. Organizations must now consider answer engine optimization (AEO) as part of their communication strategy to ensure accurate, helpful responses are visible where patients and members are looking. This shift will fundamentally change how engagement happens, making it critical to show up not just in inboxes, but in the AI-driven experiences shaping the next generation of digital search.
What This Means for Healthcare Leaders
Collaboration beats the competition. Payers, providers, and employers are aligning on a shared vision for improving healthcare from the ground up. This includes designing healthcare around people, focusing on trust and empathy. More often than not, the most meaningful healthcare innovations don’t add complexity; they remove it.
Leaders should focus on building trustworthy digital ecosystems that center around transparency and consent, use AI to amplify human insight, and communicate with patients as participants, not recipients, of care. The mandate isn’t to deploy every new technology, but to selectively leverage those that simplify experiences, strengthen relationships, and improve healthcare outcomes. By grounding digital advancement in human-centered design and responsible AI, healthcare organizations can restore the personal connection that defines quality care while delivering the efficiency, access, and personalization consumers expect.
