Designing a safer, faster digital product experience for nationwide GP prescribing

First DataBank (FDB) partnered with Studiomade to rethink how prescribing guidance is delivered within clinical workflows through their leading clinical decision support solution, OptimiseRx. The challenge was not simply visual redesign, but a fundamental reworking of how critical information appears, behaves, and supports decision-making in real time for the nation's GPs.

Our team focused on creating an improved user experience for OptimiseRx that balances clinical safety, speed of action, and cognitive load – ensuring guidance is visible, actionable, and trusted without interrupting the prescribing flow.

The challenge

Prescribing environments are complex, with high-pressure systems where even small interruptions can have significant impact and consequences.

FDB needed OptimiseRx to:

• Surface critical safety information at the right moment

• Reduce alert fatigue and message overload

• Support fast, confident decision-making

• Maintain alignment with evolving platform constraints and workflows

• Create a scalable design system for multiple message types and severities

Ultimately, our recommendations and evolved digital product changes needed to improve the working habits and environment of clinicians with real, positive improvement to everyday conditions and scenarios of use. Increaing time efficiency, clarity of infomration presentation, and building trust were all essential criterias to our success.

Our approach

We approached this 6-month project with evidence-led design thinking, beginning with a clear idea of where OptimiseRx needed to go: a non-disruptive, integrated experience that fits naturally within clinical workflows.

From there, we moved into deep research and audit. Through one-to-one sessions with GPs, clinicians, and support staff, we surfaced the real challenges people faced day-to-day including alert fatigue, message overload, and interruptions to prescribing flow that eroded trust in the system. This research grounded everything that followed.

With those insights defined, we moved into feature design and flow creation – exploring multiple interaction models including modal interruptions, inline messaging, floating components, and sidebar-based behaviours. Translating these into product prototypes allowed us to test ideas against real prescribing scenarios rather than rely on assumptions alone.

Our UI/UX prototyping phase brought the most promising direction to life, with refined hierarchy, content tone, and interaction patterns built around the sidebar-first model that had emerged as most preferred from our research. We undertook two formal phases of user testing with GPs, clinicians, and support staff. Round one compared the core interaction models, generating findings that drove a decisive shift in design direction. A focused iteration phase followed before a second round of testing validated the solution in realistic prescribing scenarios.

Throughout the project ongoing feedback loops with clinical experts and FDB stakeholders ensured every decision balanced user needs, patient safety, and technical feasibility culminating in a final proposition delivery that gave FDB a comprehensive, validated vision ready for development.

The outcome

We delivered a comprehensive and validated direction to how the next generation of OptimiseRx as a product experience could both look and function. We did this by creating a scalable design system for in-solution messages, introducing standardised components across safety warnings, best-practice guidance, cost-saving suggestions, and alternative treatments. These UI and UX changes were underpinned by a sidebar-first interaction model that supports continuous workflow, alongside a clear, priority-based visual language to help users quickly assess message importance and act with confidence. The system also integrates direct actions such as accept, reject, modify, and order tests, transforming messages from passive alerts into actionable decision-support tools for prescribers.

All design components and the UI/UX approach developed throughout the project were shared as a Figma library enabling swift development as well as a system that would direct further digital tool creation within the organisation enabling the same validated approach to be applied to future product creation.

Impact

• An improved product experience that reduces disruption within the workflow

• Improved clarity and usability of prescribing guidance for GPs

• Increased confidence in acting on guidance and recommendations

• A scalable design foundation for future FDB products

An evolved OptimiseRx is now being developed for rollout and serves as a benchmark for how decision support can be delivered across FDB's wider product portfolio.