"Best healthcare design agencies" pulls three different buyers into one search box. A founder building a patient app types it. So does a hospital marketing manager. So does a pharma brand lead.
This list covers only one of those buyers: healthcare product and software design, the people who design patient apps, clinician tools and health data platforms. It does not cover practice marketing websites, and it does not cover pharma or life science branding.
Short version: Eleken for a dedicated monthly designer, Cieden for research led work, Guidea or EPAM Continuum for a regulated device path, ELEKS for enterprise EHR scale. The full table of 11, with fit notes, is two sections down.
I am Pavle Lucic, and I am one of the options below. So is ANML, and it discloses its own inclusion too, a step most roundups in this space skip. Every entry here gets an honest fit note, mine included.
Which healthcare design buyer are you
Search this phrase and you get three answers stitched into one page. Here is how to tell which one you actually are.
Buyer one builds healthcare product or software: a patient app, a clinician dashboard, a platform touching real health data. Buyer two runs a medical practice or hospital and needs a marketing website that brings patients through the door. Buyer three works in pharma or life sciences and needs brand identity and campaign work for a drug or device launch.
Most roundups mix all three buyers into a single top 10. That is why a founder shopping for a clinician tool ends up reading case studies about waiting room brochures.
If you are buyer two, this is not your list. Designing a medical practice website is a genuinely different job, with different skills and a different sales cycle. Go there instead.
If you are buyer three, pharma and life science branding is its own category of shop entirely, built around campaign and regulatory review workflows this list does not cover.
Everything below is for buyer one.
| What you are buying | What the work actually is | Where to go | |---|---|---| | Healthcare product or software design | Patient apps, clinician tools, health data platforms | Keep reading below | | A medical practice or hospital website | A public site that brings patients through the door | the medical practice website guide | | Pharma or life science branding | Brand identity and campaigns for a drug or device | A different category of shop, not covered here |
The best healthcare design agencies at a glance
If you already know your problem, start here.
Want a dedicated product designer on a monthly plan? Look at Eleken. Need research led, compliance aware interface work? Look at Cieden. Building a regulated device or digital therapeutic? Look at Guidea. Want one senior person who designs and ships the code themselves? That is my own listing, further down.
| Agency | Best for | Shape and size | Engagement model | Ships production code | Stage fit | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Eleken | Dedicated product designer, monthly | Subscription studio | Monthly subscription | No | Growth stage SaaS | | Cieden | Research led, compliance aware design | Mid size studio | Project based | Yes | Teams with time for discovery | | ANML | Senior led UI and UX | Small senior team | Project or retainer | | Small, focused scope | | Guidea | Regulated health tech, digital therapeutics | Specialized boutique | Project based | | Products with a regulatory path | | Pavle Lucic | Design plus front end build, one person | Solo design engineer | Project or fractional | Yes | Early to mid stage, focused scope | | ELEKS | Enterprise EMR and EHR scale builds | Large engineering and design firm | Staffed team | Yes | Enterprise | | EPAM Continuum | Medical device, FDA human factors | Large consultancy | Project based | | Device programmes | | Veranex | Medtech and device development | Large medtech consultancy | Project based | | Hardware plus software medtech | | IDEO | Strategy and service level healthcare work | Large global consultancy | Project based | | Health system or payer scale | | frog | Enterprise digital health, broader transformation | Large global consultancy | Project based | Yes | Large organizations already in change | | Designit | Multi channel service design | Large global consultancy | Project based | Yes | Multi channel service problems |
This compares publicly described service models, not paid placement, my own row included. Blank cells mean I could not verify the answer rather than that the answer is no.
How this list was built and where the bias sits
I built this list on five things, and none of them is how the website looks.
First, shipped healthcare product work, not a healthcare label pasted on generic case studies. Second, evidence of clinician facing screens, not only patient facing ones, since those are a different design problem. Third, whether the shop stops at Figma or ships front end code themselves. Fourth, whether they can talk about compliance as an operational constraint on a call, not just print a badge on their site. Fifth, whether their shape fits your stage, since a five person studio and a global consultancy are not competing for the same brief.
Here is the disclosure again, in full. I am on this list. I am not ranked first. Every entry carries a not for line, mine included.
One honesty note. I found no verified pricing, ratings, certifications or client lists I could confirm across sources, so none are published here. Where an agency states its own certification, such as HITRUST, I have attributed it as their own public claim, not an independent verification.
The 11 healthcare design agencies reviewed
Eleken
Eleken runs a subscription model for UI and UX work, with healthcare SaaS among the verticals it publishes work in, including workflows built for multiple user roles.
Best for: a health SaaS team with a steady design backlog that wants one dedicated product designer, billed monthly, without running a hiring process.
Not for: a team that also needs the integration or interface engine built, since Eleken's engagement stops at design files.
Cieden
Cieden leads with research before anyone opens Figma, and stays compliance aware throughout its healthcare interface work.
Best for: a team that needs real discovery, user interviews and workflow mapping, before design work starts.
Not for: a team needing shipped screens inside a fortnight, since the discovery phase takes real time up front.
ANML
ANML is a small studio led by senior people, doing UI and UX for health tech apps and connected devices.
Best for: a small, focused scope where you want senior hands directly on the work, not a full staffed team.
Not for: a large programme running several tracks at once, where you need bench depth ANML is not built to field.
Worth naming here. ANML is the only competitor I found in this search that openly discloses its own inclusion on its list, a transparency move most roundups skip entirely.
Guidea
Guidea specializes in regulated health tech: digital therapeutics, medical devices and products with a real clinical validation path.
Best for: a product that already has a regulatory pathway and needs design rigor to match it.
Not for: an early, unvalidated idea, where that level of rigor is cost you do not need yet.
Pavle Lucic
This is my own listing, so read it with that in mind.
I am one senior designer who designs the health tech product surface, then builds the front end myself in React. Nothing gets quietly simplified between Figma and production that way. My published craft work covers healthcare UX design and healthcare UI design, and every example I describe is an anonymized composite rather than any one named client.
Best for: a founder or small team wanting one senior person across design and front end code, on a focused scope.
Not for: five parallel workstreams, FDA human factors validation studies, or a programme needing a large vendor security review before anyone can start.
ELEKS
ELEKS is a large engineering and design firm working at EMR and EHR scale, and it states its own HITRUST certification publicly.
Best for: an enterprise build where design and engineering need to be staffed together under one roof.
Not for: a small startup scope, where ELEKS's size works against you on both cost and speed.
EPAM Continuum
EPAM Continuum does medical device product design, including FDA human factors work as part of the process.
Best for: a device programme where the interface itself is part of a regulatory submission.
Not for: a pure software UI refresh with no device or submission attached.
Veranex
Veranex works across medtech and device development, human factors included, spanning hardware and the software around it.
Best for: a hardware plus software medtech programme needing both disciplines under one contract.
Not for: a pure digital health SaaS surface with no physical device involved.
IDEO
IDEO is an enterprise consultancy where healthcare is one vertical among many, strongest at system and service level thinking.
Best for: a health system or payer working at strategy scale, not a single screen.
Not for: a startup needing shipped screens next quarter, since IDEO's engagements run at a slower, broader altitude.
frog
frog does enterprise digital health work, usually inside a larger transformation programme rather than as a standalone project.
Best for: a large organization already running change at scale, with digital health as one piece of it.
Not for: a single, focused product scope, where frog's programme size is more than the job needs.
Designit
Designit does service design across channels for large health organizations, part of Wipro's broader consultancy footprint.
Best for: a multi channel service problem spanning app, call center and in person care.
Not for: a startup with one product surface, where the service design lens has nothing to connect yet.
Qubstudio, UX Studio, ProCreator and Fantasy show up often in healthcare roundups too. Qubstudio and UX Studio both list healthcare among the industries they serve, and ProCreator shows healthcare client work, but none of them leads with healthcare as its core specialty the way the shops above do, so verify the vertical evidence yourself.
The vetting rubric that separates them
HIPAA is a badge, not a design decision
Every roundup in this space name drops HIPAA compliant or HITRUST certified, and none says what that means on screen.
Ask on the call. What happens to unsaved work when a session times out? What does a locked or shared clinical workstation display to the next person who walks up? What does a clinician expose when they screen share during a telehealth call? Do patient identifiers ever show up in a URL, in analytics, or in an error log? What does a printed record show?
A shop that answers with actual screens is different from one that answers with a badge. I wrote more on the screen level decisions HIPAA actually forces if you want the long version.
Alert hierarchy and safety critical UI, have they shipped it before?
This is absent from every roundup I read. Ask to see an alert tier spec. Ask whether a critical alert still reads once you remove colour. Ask what typography they use for lab values and dosing figures, since a misread digit there is not a cosmetic bug.
I cover this in more depth in alert tiers, colour failure and typography as a dosing safeguard.
What does EHR integration actually mean here?
No competitor draws this line, so I will. A design agency designs the screens around the data an existing EHR exposes. Building the connection itself, including HL7 or FHIR mapping and the interface engine, is engineering work, not design work.
Ask directly. Who builds the integration, and who owns the decision when a field your design assumed does not exist in your instance?
Patient, clinician or back office, which have they actually shipped?
Every roundup names this split. None of them operationalizes it. Turn it into a proof request on the call. Show me a clinician facing screen you shipped, that a real user had to operate under time pressure, not a patient landing page. Ask which of the three surfaces they have shipped the most of.
Match the shop to your stage
| Your situation | What usually fits | What is usually overkill | |---|---|---| | Funded startup with one product surface | A solo design engineer or a small subscription studio | A global consultancy retainer | | Scale up with a real backlog | A boutique studio on retainer, or a dedicated subscription designer | A one person freelance engagement | | Health system or payer | An enterprise consultancy working at strategy and service level | A single freelancer for the whole programme | | Device maker with a regulatory path | A medtech consultancy with human factors experience | A generalist studio with no device history |
When you do not need a healthcare specialist
Not every product behind a healthcare label needs a healthcare specialist. If your tool is a scheduling or billing system with no clinical decision inside it, it behaves like ordinary enterprise software.
A strong generalist may serve you better than a premium vertical specialist, and probably costs less too. Start with the wider UX agency shortlist instead.
Sometimes the real question is not which agency, but whether to hire an agency at all. If that is where you are, settle it first: whether you need a hire at all rather than an agency.
Pick the shop that matches the buyer you actually are. The most expensive mistake in this category is briefing the wrong kind of shop for the job you have.
If you are scoping a focused health tech product, from patient app to clinician tool, and want one senior person handling design and the front end together, see how I approach product design engagements.