Seventy-three percent of healthcare providers still rely on legacy systems, and organizations spend two to three times more on maintaining these outdated platforms than modern alternatives would cost.
Yet most modernization efforts focus exclusively on backend infrastructure while treating user experience as an afterthought.
This approach is both costly and shortsighted. The companies that succeed in digital transformation understand that modernizing systems without reimagining user experience is a fundamental missed opportunity.
The Problem With Piecemeal Modernization
When MedTech companies modernize their backend systems, they typically prioritize scalability, security, and regulatory compliance.
These are essential considerations, but they only address half the transformation challenge. The user-facing experience — the interface clinicians, patients, and caregivers interact with daily — often receives minimal investment.
The result is what healthcare organizations call “paving the cow path”: using new technology to replicate existing processes rather than redesigning them for better outcomes. This creates shiny new systems that perpetuate the same workflow friction that originally drove the need for change.
The market stakes are significant: The healthcare IT integration market is projected to grow from $4.43 billion to $12.97 billion by 2032, creating substantial opportunities for companies that approach modernization strategically. While traditional IT modernization focuses on scalability and security, Method’s approach puts user adoption front and center. We’ve seen too many perfectly engineered systems fail because they weren’t designed for how clinicians actually work.
Case Study: From Clinical Rejection to Market Success
A leading neurological device manufacturer recently faced this exact challenge.
The manufacturer’s breakthrough brain-tracking technology captured brain signal data directly from implanted leads to improve therapy for patients with neurological conditions. The clinical potential was enormous, but adoption rates were disappointing.
Despite breakthrough clinical technology, adoption rates were threatening the entire product launch — a $50 million investment at risk due to user experience gaps.
Clinicians struggled to interpret complex neurological data within their typical five-minute patient appointments. The system required extensive training and cognitive effort that busy healthcare providers just couldn’t spare.
As one stakeholder put it, “Our usability sucked, and our system was designed by engineers for engineers. It was so overly complicated.”
Rather than upgrading the backend infrastructure, the company started with user research. They conducted in-depth contextual interviews with clinicians, patients, and caregivers to understand the real barriers to adoption.
The findings uncovered that the primary challenge wasn’t technical. It was cognitive.
The transformation involved creating new mental models and interaction patterns through iterative design, supported by a data strategy and a component library and design system for consistency and scalability.
The results speak for themselves: simplified clinical workflows, data visualizations that built clinician trust, and the successful launch of a next-generation product in 2024. The same technology that had struggled with adoption became a clinical success story.
The Product Strategy Gap
For product leaders at MedTech companies, this challenge extends beyond individual devices to portfolio-wide adoption metrics. VPs of Product often excel at managing clinical efficacy requirements but struggle when user adoption becomes the determining factor in market success.
The traditional product development approach treats user experience as a post-engineering consideration. Teams focus intensively on regulatory pathways, clinical trials, and technical specifications, then discover that clinicians simply won’t use the final product as intended. This creates a strategic blind spot: Even breakthrough technology can fail commercially if it doesn’t fit into real clinical workflows.
Method’s approach integrates user experience strategy directly into the product development process. Rather than retrofitting usability after engineering decisions are locked in, we work with product teams to validate user needs alongside technical requirements. This parallel development prevents the costly redesign cycles that occur when user feedback comes too late in the development timeline.
The Strategic Advantage of Parallel Modernization
The most successful legacy transformations follow what leading software companies call “co-existence strategies.” This approach maintains existing systems while incrementally building new platforms, allowing for business-speed migration with zero disruption.
This parallel modernization offers four principal advantages:
- Risk mitigation through the continued operation of legacy systems while new experiences are validated with real users.
- User-centric development that designs experiences from first principles rather than forcing users to adapt to technical constraints.
- Regulatory compliance is addressed incrementally, with each component validated before full deployment.
- Competitive differentiation, while others focus solely on backend upgrades.
The Business Case for Experience-First Transformation
As Method has learned from its healthcare clients, organizations that prioritize workflow integration during modernization see considerable operational improvements, including reduced manual work and streamlined processes that affect the bottom line.
Poor user experience doesn’t just frustrate clinicians. It threatens revenue streams, increases support costs, and creates competitive vulnerabilities. This is particularly important given that healthcare innovation funding reached $23 billion in 2024, with nearly 30% flowing to AI-powered companies.
However, the failure of companies like Olive AI, despite $850 million in funding, demonstrates that technological sophistication without workflow integration leads to market failure.
Many companies worry that a user experience focus will slow regulatory approval. The opposite is true: The FDA increased drug approvals by 50% in 2023 compared to 2022, demonstrating improved efficiency in regulatory processes.
Additionally, regulatory innovation programs like the FDA’s Breakthrough Devices Program provide accelerated market access for breakthrough technologies that improve clinical outcomes.
Integration Is the Hidden UX Challenge
Modern medical devices must integrate seamlessly with hospital IT ecosystems. Market dynamics demonstrate that companies with strong integration capabilities dramatically reduce implementation time and gain strong competitive advantages in hospital adoption cycles.
For MedTech companies, this creates both opportunity and obligation. User experience design must account for EHR integration, hospital information systems, and clinical workflows from the beginning rather than retrofitting connectivity later.
Addressing the Talent Gap
One challenge MedTech companies face is the talent gap between hardware engineering expertise and digital experience design capabilities. Many organizations excel at device engineering but lack the multidisciplinary skills required for modern user experiences.
This creates a strategic decision point: Should companies hire full-time UX teams, or partner with specialized consultants who can accelerate transformation while building internal capabilities?
The answer is often a hybrid approach that bridges immediate needs with long-term capability building.
Organizations that successfully navigate this challenge typically start with experienced partners (like Method) who deliver immediate results while upskilling internal teams. This approach allows companies to validate their digital strategy and demonstrate ROI before making hiring commitments.
The most effective partnerships combine three elements:
- Demonstrating new ways of working through hands-on collaboration
- Upskilling existing teams through embedded coaching and training
- Co-creating solutions that internal teams can sustain and evolve
This methodology helps external expertise translate to lasting internal capability rather than temporary project outcomes.
Companies that take this approach see faster time-to-market for modernization initiatives, reduced risk in digital investments, and internal teams equipped with the cross-functional skills necessary for ongoing innovation.
The secret is selecting partners who see themselves as capability builders, not just solution deliverers.
The Transformation Imperative
The healthcare industry is shifting toward value-based care models, with CMS targeting 100% of Traditional Medicare beneficiaries in accountable care relationships by 2030. This shift means user experience affects reimbursement and long-term viability.
Forward-thinking companies approach transformation with three important considerations:
- Multi-stakeholder design that serves patients, clinicians, and caregivers simultaneously
- Workflow integration that respects clinical time constraints and is embedded into existing processes
- Data as experience that turns complex information into actionable insights for time-pressed healthcare providers
Moving Forward
For MedTech leaders planning legacy system modernization, the evidence is clear: Backend transformation without user experience redesign is a missed opportunity.
The companies that will thrive approach modernization as a holistic transformation, upgrading technology while reimagining how solutions fit into the complex world of healthcare delivery.
This requires experience-led transformation that starts with user research, designs for workflow integration, and builds backend systems that enable rather than constrain great user experiences.
The market opportunity is substantial, the regulatory environment is supportive, and the competitive differentiation potential is vast. The question isn’t whether to modernize. It’s whether to modernize with the strategic thinking that positions your company for growth.