Embedding specialized design talent to support complex healthcare platforms for a multi-national tech client — marked by a transition from a consulting-based partnership to staffing-based.
For more than seven years, Outwitly has continued to work with a multi-national technology solutions provider focused on innovating and digitizing services in healthcare and life sciences. Each project they undertake varies significantly, from pharmaceutical solutions for national grocery chains, to wellness apps for large drugstore chains with over 1000 locations, to patient scheduling applications for client startups.
Our relationship started through design consulting. The organization initially engaged Outwitly to provide direct project-based support in the form of service design, UX design, UI design, and design strategy. In 2021, the demand for help with this transformative work grew, and led this organization to enlist Outwitly’s talent solution services.
They needed to embed trusted, vetted design talent onto their teams in an ongoing but flexible capacity — talent who could move fast, work with empathy, and navigate the complexity of patient care systems and services.
Outwitly has provided our organization top-quality UX/UI resources for a number of years. These engagements have been consistently successful — even under tight timelines. We always collaborate as a team to identify candidates and assess their skills for specific requirements.
Director of User Experience, Healthcare Solutions Partner
The design leaders in this organization needed a wide range of skills to cover the wide range of services, clients and sectors of healthcare they catered to.
Specialized expertise was non-negotiable. These projects required practitioners who had experience working with healthcare systems, and could navigate complex jargon, requirements and workflows, while also standardizing and translating experiences across mobile, desktop and tablet formats. This talent would also need to integrate their work seamlessly into Agile environments with tight project timelines.
The systems being transformed were fast-paced and sensitive. Depending on the project, they needed practitioners who could shadow staff in hectic clinical settings, conduct usability testing with users going through difficult or daunting experiences, approach solutioning and prototyping with appropriate user empathy, and handle private data with caution and care.
End-user needs were often urgent and serious. When patients and clinical staff need access to critical systems, delays or frustrations can translate to real differences in patient outcomes. The organization serving clients in this important work needed fast project ramp-ups, and spending months in hiring cycles was not an option for them.
Over three years, Outwitly placed more than 20 contractors across UX research, UX/UI design, service design, and design strategy roles on the teams of this healthcare solutions provider.
They knew they had a trusted talent partner who could:
Offer expert, context-led guidance in role scoping and capabilities assessment. We worked with their design leadership to assess the kind of talent required, not just in terms of hard skills, but in experience levels, professional backgrounds, working styles, etc. We handled vetting to ensure candidates matched with the technical requirements and showed the sensitivity and initiative needed for a fast-paced healthcare sector.
Source design talent quickly for a wide range of requirements. We also met requirements many staffing partners would struggle with: a mix of part-time contractors, short-term engagements, extended contracts (up to 24 months), and roles requiring in-person shadowing in clinics — with timelines as short as one week from request to placement.
Present excellent-fit candidates on the first try. Our success rate was 100% — every candidate we presented was hired.
Provide ongoing support beyond candidate placement. Outwitly was there for support with onboarding, role orientations, and regular check-ins with both contractors and client teams — keeping communication open and alignment strong throughout the engagement.
The contractors placed from Outwitly’s pool delivered valuable recommendations and improved experiences for the organization’s clients and end-users, with some talent placements receiving repeated renewals year over year. In some cases, the organization’s internal team members even proactively sought buy-in for added design initiatives in order to continue the collaboration and maintain access to the talent’s skills.
Their organization benefited from:
Embedded collaboration across functions. The placed practitioners integrated smoothly within product teams, leading research sessions, mapping patient and clinician journeys, and turning insights into actionable design strategy.
Quick ramp-up and sustained momentum. Discovery research, user testing and prototyping moved forward quickly in each case, with the contractors taking ownership of experiences and ensuring that user data translated to tangible improvements to patient and clinician experiences.
Strategic stewardship of patient and clinician experiences. The specialized talent operated as strategic partners within teams, shaping experience direction across patient- and clinician-facing tools in sensitive contexts.
A trusted, design-led partnership with lasting organizational support. As design continued to prove its value across projects, the organization maintained strong buy-in for design-led strategy. Design leadership knew they had a partner they could rely on to bring in the right expertise as needs evolved, enabling continued investment in thoughtful, human-centred digital work.
By partnering with Outwitly, this healthcare software leader gained a reliable way to scale specialized design expertise that fit with their diverse projects, tight timelines, and high-stakes requirements. This ensured that their teams could continue delivering digital experiences that supported care providers and the people they serve in the most effective ways possible.
Through our partner Outwitly, we’ve found amazing and talented people that allowed us to execute our client projects.
VP of User Experience, Healthcare Partner
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