Usability and UX in Healthcare: Exploring Current Practices and Future Directions

Despite the growing importance of Usability and User eXperience (U/UX) methods in healthcare technology, significant barriers hinder their effective application. We performed a narrative review to identify existing knowledge and uncover gaps to suggest actionable steps for improving adoption of U/UX methods. Results highlight that usability issues persist due to inconsistent definitions within the discipline, debate over methods, and limited involvement of end-users in evaluations. Besides, healthcare professionals and patients are difficult to recruit for testing due to time constraints, recruitment challenges, and ethical considerations. Organizationally, companies face resource shortages and often misunderstand the value of usability activities. U/UX is therefore often reduced to superficial design elements, with a lack of time and budget for thorough evaluations. To address these issues, future research must focus on developing usability methods that align with the constraints of the healthcare environment.