Featured In
Trusted by medical device leaders since 2002
- Medrad
- Edwards Lifesciences
- COBE
- Thermo Fisher Scientific
- Johnson & Johnson
- DermSpectra
- Medtronic
- ANEUVO
- Life Technologies
- Alcon
- Baxter
- Enigma Diagnostics
- Ormco
- Braun
- Niche Bio
- Life Scan
- Gambro
- Wavetec Vision
- Advanced Bionics
WHY EXPERIENCE MATTERS
Most UX firms can design. Fewer can design for how clinicians actually work.
We’ve spent decades in surgical suites, ICUs, cath labs and laboratories, learning how people work. We uncover their needs, both spoken and unspoken, by listening closely and understanding why they hesitate or develop workarounds.
We turn those insights into clearer workflows, predictable product behavior and working prototypes tested with intended users. Anxiety Maps, workflow specifications and design documentation connect our research to practical decisions that support development and FDA submissions when needed.
Trusted by medical device leaders since 2002
SELECTED WORK
Simple UX. Deep expertise.
Spinal Cord Stimulation | ExaStim
How Areteworks designed ExaStim, ANEUVO’s FDA cleared spinal cord stimulation system, for clinicians in clinics and patients at home. Formative usability, use error reduction, motor recovery.
“Areteworks took ExaStim from concept to FDA clearance with a workflow that worked for both our clinical team and our patients. They thought about safety, usability, and regulatory rigor from day one.”
— ANEUVO
Arterion® Contrast Injection System
In cath labs and interventional radiology, clinicians need to program and monitor contrast injections while staying focused on the patient and procedure. Drawing on medical device experience and clinical workflow research, Areteworks designed the touchscreen interface for Medrad’s Arterion system to make injection phases, timing, and settings easier to follow.
“Areteworks deeply understood our clinical goals and delivered a design that exceeded expectations. Their work brought the Arterion to life with an interface radiologists trust.”
— Director, Product Development, Medrad Radiology
HemoSphere Advanced Monitoring
In the cardiac ICU, clinicians read hemodynamic data on patients whose status can change in seconds. Drawing on decades of medical device experience, Areteworks translated clinician input into the visual hierarchy, data visualization, and alarm logic clinicians rely on under pressure — designing the interface for Edwards’ HemoSphere monitoring platform.
“Areteworks grasped our complex ICU workflows quickly and delivered an interface that enhanced data visibility without compromising usability. An outstanding design partner.”
– Edwards Lifesciences
Trusted UX Design Agency Services
Care and passion for each project. From research to refinement.
Clinical environments don't forgive friction. We design workflows that match how clinicians actually work — under time pressure, with interruptions, and across shifts. Our work supports adoption, reduces use error, and earns clinician trust in environments where mistakes have consequences. Industry experience includes Edwards Lifesciences ICU monitoring, Medrad contrast injection systems, and Medtronic medical devices.
FDA regulated UI design for medical devices and healthcare software. We translate use specifications, task analyses, and URRA findings into interfaces that meet IEC 62366-1 expectations and feel intuitive to clinicians. From point of care diagnostics to ICU monitoring, our UI work supports both compliance and clinical confidence.
Our Anxiety Journey Maps go deeper than clinical task flows. We map where clinicians, technicians, and lab scientists hesitate, improvise, reach for workarounds, or lose confidence—especially during high-stakes moments. And we look beyond their interaction with the device itself to the broader workflows, handoffs, information, and supporting tasks that can make their work easier or more difficult. These anxiety points often reveal usability risks and opportunities that interviews alone can miss.
By combining what users say with what we observe them actually doing, we identify where uncertainty begins, where trust in the system breaks down, and why. We translate those findings into clearer workflows, better decision support, and more intuitive interactions that reduce uncertainty and help users feel confident when it matters most.
Clinical environments require real research, not generic personas. We run contextual interviews, observe clinicians at work, and study real workflows under genuine time pressure. The result is design grounded in how people actually behave in high stakes environments, not how they describe themselves in a survey. Research at the level the work demands.
Early iterative testing saves companies time and budget. Formative evaluations show how your application will perform with clinicians, patients, nurses, or technicians, and signal how it will hold up during Summative testing (if needed). When Summative validation is required for FDA submission, we coordinate with certified Human Factors specialists, giving you senior design judgment without bringing a separate firm in late.
Explore our medical device usability testing services.
Static screens win arguments. Working prototypes settle them. We build interactive prototypes in Figma and Figma Make so the team, leadership, and clinicians can test workflows and give feedback before development starts. Fast iteration, fast feedback, and a much shorter path between a design idea and a validated decision.
Trusted by industry leaders
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Areteworks delivered a clean, intuitive interface that integrated seamlessly with HemoSphere’s advanced monitoring platform. Their UX team quickly grasped the complexity of our workflows and responded with thoughtful, user-centered solutions. Through multiple iterations and rapid stakeholder feedback, they created a design that enhanced data visibility without compromising usability. We’re impressed by their speed, clarity, and deep understanding of healthcare UX—truly outstanding work from a reliable and talented partner.
– Edwards Lifesciences
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Steven, you did a marvelous job! Our legacy heart-lung perfusion system had many usability challenges and relied too heavily on human precision. Your team worked closely with our engineers and product managers to completely transform the application.
The final product exceeded even our management team’s expectations. It is more intuitive, reliable, and thoughtfully designed than we imagined possible. All I can say is: WOW!COBE CARDIOVASCULAR, Director
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Areteworks played a key role in helping us bring the Arterion® Injection System to market with a user interface that’s both visually clear and exceptionally easy to use. Their team grasped the critical need to support radiologists with timely, patient-specific injection cues. The result was a refined design that truly enhances clinical decision-making. Kudos to the design team—their work exceeded our expectations in every way.
– Medrad
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Areteworks, our trusted UX Design Agency, delivered intuitive and elegant UI concepts that were both visually refined and highly functional. Their thoughtful approach and deep understanding of our complex scientific workflows led to a 35% reduction in user errors and a 40% improvement in overall process efficiency. Their designs impressed multiple teams and made a real difference across our healthcare organization.
Thermo Fisher, Scientific Manufacturing Project
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Areteworks took ExaStim from concept to FDA clearance with a workflow that worked for both our clinical team and our patients. They thought about safety, usability, and regulatory rigor from day one.
EXASTIM, Project Manager
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We have worked with numerous design firms and can say Areteworks delivers impressive, innovative UI/UX solutions.
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Areteworks played a critical role in shaping the user interface for our Enigma ML portable molecular testing platform. Despite limited screen real estate, their team successfully delivered a clean, intuitive UI that made complex diagnostic data easy to interpret at the point of care. Their thoughtful design approach helped us create a seamless and efficient experience for clinical users. The result: a smarter, faster interface tailored for real-world medical environments.
– Enigma Diagnostics
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Partnering with Areteworks, a top UX Design Agency, transformed our applications. Their intuitive and innovative UX solutions led to a 40% increase in team productivity—far beyond what we expected in such a short time. By deeply understanding user pain points, they created streamlined workflows that felt natural and easy to adopt. Areteworks delivered beyond expectations and made a lasting impact on both usability and performance.
– Client Ormco, Dental App
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Areteworks’ team is exceptional, and we truly value our collaboration with your team.
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Areteworks understood what cataract surgeons actually need in the operating room. The measurement workflow felt natural from the first time we used it, and the display gave us exactly the information we needed at exactly the right moment. They designed for the surgical field, not for the spec sheet.
- WAVETECH VISION
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Steven and his team did an outstanding job with the UX redesign. We were transitioning from a physical dial-based interface to a fully touchscreen system, which required the entire user experience to be reimagined.
His team conducted thorough field research and successfully translated real user pain points into intuitive, practical features. They were collaborative, thoughtful, and highly effective throughout the process. I would absolutely work with Steven and his team again on future projects.COBE BCT, Project Director
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Areteworks produce work that is unmatched in quality and thoroughness.
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Areteworks brought a user-first perspective to our project initiative, seamlessly unifying the experience across live monitors, mobile devices, and remotes systems. Their ability to simplify complex interactions into a cohesive, elegant interface was outstanding. The result was a smarter, more connected ecosystem that significantly improved usability and elevated our entire product experience.
– Samsung
Insights
Better questions. Better design.
Healthcare UX Design: When Research Meets Resistance
A story about clinical work, the hidden demands healthcare applications place on nurses, and the product culture needed to act on user research.
Clinical Workflow Design for Medical Devices
How clinical observation, Anxiety Maps and usability testing help medical device teams turn workflow problems into clearer design decisions.
The Device Was New. The Problem Wasn’t.
A completely new medical device may have no field history, but its users bring years of experience, expectations, and workarounds from other devices. By observing how clinicians really work—including subtle hesitations, alternate paths, and behavioral cues—teams can uncover usability risks earlier and reduce surprises during human factors validation.