In today’s rapidly evolving MedTech landscape, innovation alone is no longer enough. Despite significant investment in R&D, many large organisations struggle to translate breakthrough ideas into impactful solutions. But why is this? Many companies are managing a disconnect between product development and real-world stakeholder pain points.
A recent article from McKinsey, titled ‘why innovative products aren’t enough for a successful pharma launch’ featured insights from pharmaceutical leaders, including AstraZeneca, GSK, Pfizer, and Roche. The article highlighted six recurring challenges in innovation development across the industry:
- Misaligned assumptions about stakeholder needs
- Fragmented internal collaboration
- Product-centric rather than experience-centric design
- Lack of continuous feedback loops
- Regulatory misalignment
- Low adoption due to usability gaps
However, these issues are not unique to pharma. In MedTech, similar challenges arise when scaling innovation. At eg technology, we’ve seen firsthand how siloed development and poor workflow integration can derail even the most promising product developments.
Designing at Scale with Workflow-Centric Innovation
This is not a new problem. In fact, we have previously written a blog outlining a proven approach to overcoming these barriers, Designing at Scale: Solving Complex Workflow Challenges. Within this article, we share that the key lies in embedding user insight early and continuously throughout the development lifecycle. But what else can organisations do to tackle the challenges in innovation development?
1. Replace Assumptions with Evidence
Innovators often assume what healthcare professionals or patients need, leading to misdirected features and poor engagement. It is important to really get to know and understand your users. Conducting user studies will uncover their motivations, requirements, the use environment and even their capabilities and limitations. Utilising the appropriate formats, tools, and techniques will enable you to tailor your chosen user study accordingly to suit the stage and scale of the project and any defined criteria. These can involve contextual inquiry, shadowing and Day In The Life (DITL) studies to uncover real-world clinical complexity and user frustrations.
2. Build Feedback Loops into Development
Just as PwC highlights the power of agile, test-and-learn cycles in pharma, it is imperative to embed iterative usability testing and closed-loop insight to ensure continuous product refinement. Usability engineering can take many forms before the device itself resembles something feasible; this could be in terms of lab test process, clinical pathway, user interaction and logistics. This will evolve as the product development continues, and collective understanding of the user requirements deepens. Moving through prototype phases is vital for identifying issues early and resolving them before they become costly or insurmountable. This approach ensures that results of any early user testing, known as formative evaluations, can be fed back into the design through iteration. This not only results in a more robust product which doesn’t progress down the wrong path for too long but also helps to align stakeholders with the development process.
3. Align Product with Clinical Pathways
It is important not to overlook the importance of planning a robust development roadmap, which incorporates user and product requirements, user workflows, risk management, and how these elements are interlinked with the crucial clinical trial phase. Misalignment between product design and clinical evaluation can lead to compliance issues and poor adoption. By mapping user workflows against clinical pathways – through the definition of clear product requirements, considered user workflows, a solid risk management strategy and an iterative approach – you can better identify integration points that reduce friction and accelerate uptake.
4. Break Down Silos
As well as aligning processes, it is important not to overlook stakeholder alignment. Effective workflow development requires inter-departmental alignment and cross-functional collaboration. Greenlight Guru’s 2025 Medical Industry Benchmark Study recently shared that ‘One in three companies report their quality management efforts are siloed, and the larger and more mature the company, the worse the silos and related problems’. They also specify that ‘companies who reported being highly collaborative are six times more likely to meet their quality objectives, demonstrating the importance of breaking down silos’.
Interdisciplinary alignment, from engineering and regulatory teams to clinical and user experience teams, ensures that every stakeholder is engaged from concept to launch, promoting collaboration, accelerating development, and minimising costs.
5. Drive Adoption Through Experience-Led Design
There is a definite trend in companies moving from a product-centric to experience-centric approach. In their article from product to customer experience: The new way to launch in pharma, McKinsey states that “focusing too narrowly on clinical value often leads companies to neglect a powerful driver of launch success: the customer experience”.
Innovation must be intuitive and usable. Shifting focus from “best molecule” to “best journey” will help you design modular, frictionless solutions that resonate with users and deliver measurable impact.
Usability Engineering: A Critical Enabler for Clinical Success
We’ve previously highlighted the importance of embedding usability engineering early in your development process to ensure your medical devices and digital health solutions are ready for clinical evaluations. However, what are some of the key tactics involved in usability engineering?
The below list is far from extensive, but some key stages in the usability engineering process are:
- Voice of the Customer (VoC): Capturing user needs through interviews, surveys and observational studies to inform design decisions.
- Formative Usability Testing: Iterative testing during development to identify and mitigate use errors before clinical trials.
- Summative Usability Testing: Final validation of the user interface to ensure safety and effectiveness under realistic conditions.
- Human Factors Integration: Designing for real-world use by understanding cognitive load, environmental constraints and user variability.
- Risk-Based Design: Prioritising safety by identifying potential use errors and designing mitigations into the product.
Incorporating these practices into your development will not only enhance user experience but also reduce regulatory risk and improve clinical outcomes, by creating a more considered design process.
How eg technology can help
At eg technology, we support organisations of all sizes in bridging the gap between innovation and real-world usability by aligning product development with clinical workflows. Our human-centred design approach integrates user insight from the outset, by identifying stakeholder pain points, minimising assumptions, capturing clinical complexity and enabling effective automation.
With deep experience navigating the challenges of scaling, our team know how to address fragmented developments by implementing cross-functional collaboration and embedding agility and feedback into every stage of development. The outcome is intuitive, compliant, and technically robust devices that integrate seamlessly into clinical environments.
Ready to transform your innovation strategy?
To discover how you can design with purpose, develop with insight and deliver with impact, please get in touch with our team:
Contact us via email on design@egtechnology.co.uk, by giving us a call on +44 01223 813184, or by clicking here.
