(01) Case study · 2023
Cadence Health
A patient portal and design system for a clinic network serving 400,000 patients across Northern Europe.
Client
Cadence Health
Year
2023
Services
Product design, design system, accessibility audit
Team
Ines Moreau, Theo Lindqvist, Amara Okafor
Live site
Client
Cadence Health
Year
2023
Services
Product design, design system, accessibility audit
Team
Ines Moreau, Theo Lindqvist, Amara Okafor
Live site
01 — Challenge
Three portals, one patient
Cadence Health had grown by acquiring clinics, and patients met a different portal for every one of them. Booking, test results and messages lived behind separate logins, each with its own password rules and its own idea of what a calendar looks like. Older patients gave up and phoned instead, and the support line spent most of its day resetting passwords. Three product teams maintained three front ends with no shared components, so even small fixes shipped three times. A new accessibility regulation made it urgent: every portal had to meet WCAG 2.2 AA within eighteen months. Clinicians were frustrated too, because messages from patients arrived in three inboxes and important results were sometimes read late.
02 — Approach
Design for the worst day
We designed for patients on a phone, in a waiting room, on a bad day. One login, large touch targets, plain language and a clear next step on every screen came before anything visual. We audited all three portals against WCAG 2.2, then built a single design system of 120 components with accessibility notes written into each one. Every flow was tested with patients over seventy and with screen-reader users before it reached engineering. We paired with each product team for a full sprint, so the system was adopted from the inside rather than handed over as a file. Clinicians joined the reviews as well, so messages and results arrive in one inbox with the urgent items first.
03 — Result
Calmer for patients and staff
The new portal replaced all three old ones and meets WCAG 2.2 AA throughout, a year ahead of the deadline. Support tickets fell by 35%, password resets almost disappeared and patient satisfaction rose 31 points in the first survey after launch. Three product teams now build on the same 120-component system, so a fix made once ships everywhere. Online bookings overtook phone bookings for the first time, including among patients over sixty-five. Cadence has since used the same system to launch a video consultation service in four months. Clinicians now answer patient messages in one inbox, and the average reply time fell from three days to under one.
04 — Numbers
01 — Components
120
Documented in Figma and code, shared by three teams.
02 — WCAG 2.2
AA
Audited by an external accessibility partner.
03 — Support tickets
−35%
In the six months after the portal went live.
05 — Gallery
(04) Client’s word
“Calm, precise and fast. Patients noticed the difference in the first week.”
Lena Vogel
Director of Digital · Cadence Health
etch
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