NY UX Agencies

Healthcare and healthtech UX agencies in New York

Health products carry a design burden most categories don't. A clinician using a tool at a patient's bedside is working under time pressure with no tolerance for ambiguity, and a patient reading a result is frightened and reading badly.

See the agencies Read the FAQ

Two users, opposite needs

Both the clinician and the patient are real users with opposite needs, and a lot of health software is designed as though only one of them exists.

Add regulatory constraint, security requirements that shape the interface, and procurement cycles run by people who will never use the product, and general product skill is not enough on its own.

At a glance

Six studios, side by side

Facts only, no scores or rankings. What each team is built for, and where it sits.

Studio Healthcare focus Presence
ustwoClinical and patient-facing UXBrooklyn; London HQ
Code and TheoryPharma and health communicationsOne WTC, Manhattan; global
Cake & ArrowPayer, benefits, and claimsManhattan, ~47 people
DOOR3Clinical and pharmacy operations softwareNYC HQ, global team
FantasyConsumer health and wellnessSan Francisco and New York
Local ProjectsSpatial patient and visitor experience123 William St, Manhattan

The agencies

Six with verified health work

The read, signature strengths, work to know, presence, and who each one suits.

ustwo logo

The deepest health practice on this list, by a distance.

The read:
ustwo runs health as a standing practice rather than a vertical it mentions in pitches, and its clinical work is the proof. Its DeepMind Streams work put a tool in the hands of nurses and doctors under stringent security requirements, which is a harder brief than most consumer health apps ever face. It has also built its own health products, so the team has lived with the consequences of its own design decisions rather than handing them over at launch. Worth knowing the health practice is global with a strong London weighting, alongside the Brooklyn studio.
Signature strengths:
UX research, clinical and patient-facing UX, service design, interaction design, product strategy.
Work to know:
DeepMind Health's Streams app for clinicians, Moodnotes and PAUSE built in house, plus RVO Health, Mavie, and Helios Fertility.
Presence:
Brooklyn studio at 20 Jay St, London headquarters, plus Malmö, Lisbon, Tokyo.
Suits you if:
You're designing for clinicians, or for patients at a moment when getting it wrong matters.
Website:
ustwo.com
Code and Theory logo

Pharma and health communications at scale.

The read:
Code and Theory's health work sits with pharmaceutical companies and diagnostics rather than clinical software, which is a distinct discipline governed as much by regulatory review as by user research. Its editorial background is genuinely useful here, because a great deal of health communication fails by presenting complex information without hierarchy. Large agency inside the Stagwell group, so establish the assigned team.
Signature strengths:
Content and communications design, product design, brand experience, design systems.
Work to know:
Pfizer, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, ReachMD, and BioReference Laboratories.
Presence:
One World Trade Center, Manhattan, with offices in San Francisco, London, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Manila.
Suits you if:
You're a pharma or diagnostics company and the work has to survive medical and regulatory review.
Cake & Arrow logo

The payer side, which nobody else covers properly.

The read:
Cake & Arrow works exclusively in insurance and financial services, and its practice spans life and health alongside property and casualty. That puts it on the side of healthcare most design studios avoid entirely: benefits selection, claims, and the broker and employer experience. Its research habit of treating agents and administrators as users with their own needs transfers directly to this territory.
Signature strengths:
UX research, insurance and benefits UX, enterprise software design, service design.
Work to know:
Aflac, MetLife, Northwestern Mutual, Chubb, Travelers, and Unqork.
Presence:
Manhattan, roughly 47 people.
Suits you if:
Your product sits between a health plan and the people choosing, selling, or administering it.
DOOR3 logo

Clinical and pharmacy operations software, made usable.

The read:
DOOR3's health credentials come from the operational layer, the systems that run a pharmacy or a practice rather than the ones patients see. Its work on cloud-based pharmacy management covers the functions staff perform dozens of times a day, from insurance runs to label printing, where a saved second compounds. Its UX audit offering fits well here, because most healthcare organisations have working software with a usability problem they can't articulate.
Signature strengths:
Enterprise and clinical application UX, UX audits, design systems, data visualization, user research.
Work to know:
DAA Enterprises cloud pharmacy management software, alongside enterprise work for Cadwalader, Surex Direct, and Aptivio.
Presence:
New York City headquarters with a global team.
Suits you if:
Your clinical or operational software works but the people using it all day are fighting it.
Website:
door3.com
Fantasy logo

Consumer health, where the challenge is getting people to keep using it.

The read:
Fantasy's relevant experience is consumer-facing health rather than clinical, where the design problem is engagement and comprehension: making genomic or diagnostic results legible to someone with no training, and giving them a reason to return. The house style is visually assertive, which works for consumer health brands and is the wrong register for clinical tooling.
Signature strengths:
UX, interaction design, AI experience design, product design.
Work to know:
23andMe, plus product work for Google, Netflix, Spotify, and Samsung.
Presence:
San Francisco and New York.
Suits you if:
You're a consumer health or wellness product competing for attention rather than deployed by an institution.
Website:
fantasy.co
Local Projects logo

Patient experience where the design is the building.

The read:
Best known for museum work, Local Projects has applied its experience design practice in healthcare settings, and it belongs here for a narrow case: hospitals and health campuses where the patient experience is spatial and the digital layer is environmental. A specialist option rather than a general healthcare UX partner, and one of very few studios in New York working at this level.
Signature strengths:
Experience design, interactive installation, creative technology, spatial storytelling.
Work to know:
University Hospitals of Cleveland, alongside cultural work for Cooper Hewitt, the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York.
Presence:
123 William Street, Manhattan.
Suits you if:
You're designing a patient or visitor experience inside a physical healthcare environment.

FAQ

Healthcare UX, answered

What makes healthcare UX different from other product UX?+

Two user groups with opposing needs, and a third party paying. Clinicians need density and speed because they use the system constantly; patients need clarity and reassurance because they use it rarely and often while distressed. Designing one interface that serves both usually fails, and the more common answer is separate experiences sharing a data model. On top of that, whoever buys the software is frequently not whoever uses it, which is why so much clinical tooling is bought on feature lists and hated in practice.

Does an agency need regulatory experience to work on our product?+

For anything touching clinical use, patient data, or claims, yes. Not because designers need to be compliance experts, but because they need to have designed under those constraints before and not treat them as obstacles to argue with. Ask for a specific example where a regulatory or security requirement changed the interface, and what they did about it. Vague reassurance about being HIPAA-aware is not an answer.

Is clinician-facing or patient-facing work the harder brief?+

Different rather than harder. Clinician tools demand efficiency, error prevention, and an understanding of clinical workflow that takes real observation to acquire, and they get abandoned if they add a single unnecessary step. Patient-facing work demands comprehension and trust under stress, and gets abandoned quietly. Agencies tend to be genuinely strong at one, so ask which and don't accept both.

What does healthcare UX cost in New York?+

More than comparable consumer work, because research involves clinical observation and review cycles are longer. A defined product engagement commonly starts in the tens of thousands, and enterprise clinical or payer programmes run well into six figures. Budget separately for research access, since arranging time with clinicians is a project cost in its own right.

How long does a healthcare project take?+

Longer than the design work would suggest, with medical, legal, and regulatory review accounting for most of the difference. Sixteen to twenty-four weeks is realistic for research and design on a defined product. Clinical deployments extend further because validation and staff training sit between design and real use.

How do I choose between these agencies?+

They divide cleanly by which part of healthcare you're in. Clinical tools and patient-facing products point to ustwo. Pharma and diagnostics communications point to Code and Theory. Benefits, claims, and the payer side point to Cake & Arrow. Practice or pharmacy operations software points to DOOR3. Consumer health and wellness points to Fantasy. A physical care environment points to Local Projects.