Shaping the future of remote patient monitoring

MASIMO SAFETYNET
Company

Masimo is a global leader in non-invasive medical technologies, specializing in advanced body sensors and devices for monitoring various vital signs.

Product

Masimo SafetyNet is a SaaS based virtual care platform offering remote patient monitoring and telehealth services. By integrating wearable devices with mobile phones, it tracks patients' vital signs at home. Health data is transmitted to hospitals via a web platform, enabling real-time monitoring and alerting clinicians to critical changes for timely intervention.

Responsibilities

I was solely responsible for the end-to-end design of its clinician-facing web platform, and partially involved in designing the UX for the mobile app.

  • Product TypeWeb Platform, Mobile App (iOS & Android), Wearable Devices
  • Project Scope Redesigned 2 key pages & new features
  • Target UsersClinicians (Doctors & Nurses), Patients
  • Role Senior UX Designer II
  • Core Team 10 Engineers, 1 Product Manager
  • Timeline 2023 - 2024
Problem Statement

Masimo SafetyNet, initially launched in 2014 for remote oxygen saturation monitoring, saw a surge in use during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, post-pandemic, adoption declined as healthcare systems shifted focus toward more integrated solutions for post-surgical and chronic disease management. The platform lacked critical device integrations and features, which led to workflow inefficiencies, and usability challenges. As a result, Masimo SafetyNet struggled to meet evolving user needs and fell behind competitors.

Business Goal

To regain market competitiveness and better support clinicians and patients, Masimo focused on two key initiatives:

  • Launch a medical-grade wearable watch that monitors multiple vital signs, including ECG (electrocardiogram), and integrate a diabetes glucose meter through a partnership with Ascensia.
  • Redesign the key patient views in the clinician web platform to accommodate new health data (e.g., ECG, glucose). Also, existing clients were at risk of switching to competitors, emphasizing the urgency and strategic importance of the redesign.
How Might We Question

How might we help clinicians efficiently monitor a broader range of vital signs, like ECG and glucose within Masimo SafetyNet, by redesigning key patient views to support faster decisions and better care for post-surgical and chronic patients?

Main Objectives

The product team and I aligned early on that the redesign would focus on two core areas of the clinician web platform: the Patient Dashboard (overview of all patients) and the Patient Details (individual patient data). However, many requirements were still unclear, particularly regarding the extent of the redesign and how new health data like ECG and glucose should be visualized and integrated into clinicians’ workflows.

Current Patient Dashboard and Patient Details

To address these ambiguities, we established a set of focused objectives to guide our discovery and design process.

  • Interview key stakeholders to clarify project scope, gather context, and identify technical or regulatory constraints early in the process.
  • Interview clinicians to understand how they interpret new data like ECG and glucose, and how these metrics are currently used in clinical environments.
  • Identify workflow pain points and uncover opportunities for improvement in both current and potential clinician workflows, especially around new device data integration.
  • Research and apply best practices in medical UI design to inform scalable, intuitive, and clinically relevant interaction and visualization strategies.
Stakeholder Interviews

To ensure the redesign aligned with business goals, technical feasibility, and clinical needs, I collaborated closely with the product team and occassionally research team to conduct a series of stakeholder interviews. These sessions included teams from sales, software & hardware engineering, and clinical.

Key Insights:

  • Two existing hospital clients agreed to support the redesign by providing access to their clinicians for ongoing feedback and validation. Additionally, the company’s Chief Medical Officer, a former cardiologist, would be actively involved in shaping ECG-related features and visualizations.
  • Stakeholders unanimously acknowledged that the existing clinician web platform was outdated. There was strong enthusiasm for redesigning the Patient Dashboard and Patient Details views, both seen as high impact areas for improvement.
  • Given the project’s complexity, including regulatory requirements and clinical collaboration, the company committed to a longer development cycle. Features would be released in phases, starting with the Patient Details and its integration of ECG data.
  • The engineering team highlighted significant limitations with the current charting library. It could not render ECG waveforms or plot glucose and insulin levels on the same chart. These constraints reinforced the importance of involving engineering early in the design process to validate technical feasibility and guide practical, achievable solutions.
Client Interviews

Our primary user research was conducted through interviews with clinicians from partnered hospitals who currently use Masimo SafetyNet. The objective was to uncover usability challenges and identify opportunities for improvement. The platform’s most frequent users are nurses working in specialized care units, virtual care, or other telehealth roles.

There were 8 interviews with clinicians, mainly nurses. Before each interview, participants completed a brief questionnaire to capture patient profile details and contextual information about how they use the platform. This helped us tailor the interview protocol. During the sessions, we focused on the two key patient related views, Patient Dashboard and Patient Details. We asked participants to walk us through specific tasks referenced in their questionnaire responses.

Key Insights

  • Most users find the overall platform intuitive, with acceptable navigation. However, many small details could be fine-tuned, and several features need improvement.
  • Users are generally satisfied with the chart functionality on the Patient Details page and appreciate the accuracy of the health data trends.
  • The patient profile section on the Patient Details page is perceived as redundant, as much of that information should be sourced directly from the EMR (Electronic Medical Record).

Key Pain Points

  • Users feel the patient profile section were non-customizable, static with non-revelant data.
  • The date filter on the Patient Details page lacks flexibility and can slow down workflows when selecting custom date ranges.
  • The Patient Dashboard is perceived as visually cluttered, with irrelevant columns that make it difficult to quickly scan or prioritize patients.
  • The filter modal is overly large, often obscuring important patient data in the table view.
  • When users scroll horizontally on the Patient Dashboard, the patient name column disappears, making it hard to maintain context and track which patient they are viewing.
Learning ECG

To design the new ECG / heart condition feature in the Patient Details view, our Chief Medical Officer, formerly a cardiologist provided hands-on training sessions. These were especially valuable for helping our team understand how clinicians interpret ECG chart and data, as well as what design elements are clinically important. He also shared a clear vision for how the feature should function.

Key Insights:

  • Our company's watch records only 30 seconds at a time, so the ECG chart only needs to display one strip per session.
  • The ECG grid scale must designed accurately so that, if printed, it maintains the correct scale rather than being distorted.
Solution - Patient Details

As part of the product roadmap, the Patient Details view was prioritized for the first release alongside the new ECG feature. Based on synthesizing insights from user interviews and research analysis, we found that clinicians were generally satisfied with this page, particularly the accuracy and clarity of the health data charts.

However, several areas needed refinement. The profile section should display more relevant information instead of fixed data, and the date picker was limited in functionality, which slowed down task efficiency. Addressing these issues became key opportunities to improve usability and streamline clinical workflows.

Explore redesign solutions - Patient Profile

I explored multiple design concepts for the patient profile and iterated several times before we ultimately moved forward with the latest version. While the earlier iterations were visually appealing, they didn’t align with real-world usage. For example, patients rarely upload profile photos through the mobile app, making prominent photo placement unnecessary. Additionally, since some patient names can be quite long, dedicating a full row to the name improved readability and layout flexibility.

Explore redesign solutions - Date Picker

After speaking with two nurses to better understand their workflows and use cases, I explored several design concepts and gathered their feedback. We ultimately chose Concept #1 for its simplicity and ease of use. It resembled the previous version but included additional features that improved functionality. While the other concepts addressed more specific scenarios, they mostly catered to niche use cases.

Explore design solutions - ECG Chart

Before starting my design, I researched several competitors to understand how they approached similar features while ensuring my design remained distinct enough to avoid potential patent issues. I iterated multiple times, guided by the Chief Medical Officer’s vision, and explored several directions. Along the way, we also received feedback from other partnered hospitals. Ultimately, the final version offers the most robust set of features.

Solution - Patient Dashboard

Following the release of the Patient Details page, I began redesigning the Patient Dashboard—a data-dense table with numerous actionable columns and filters.

Key updates

  • Previously, filters opened in a large modal window that blocked much of the screen. I redesigned them as collapsible panels anchored to the left side of the interface. This vertical layout supports better scalability, allowing more filters to be added without overwhelming the user.
  • I introduced more graphical elements to improve scanability and data recognition. For example, the Alerts column now uses color-coded indicators for different alert levels, and the Compliance column features a circular dial to show percentage values. Varying font sizes were also applied to help key information stand out.
  • The Patient column, along with its associated actions, is now fixed on the left side of the table. This ensures the patient’s identity remains visible even when scrolling horizontally across other data fields.
Validation & Usability Testing

Each feature often underwent multiple rounds of usability testing to refine the design and ensure user involvement before passing high-fidelity designs to engineering. Regular QA and spike testing sessions with engineering occurred prior to each feature launch.

I collaborated with the research team to test prototypes with nurses from our partner hospitals, assessing new features and design changes. Key metrics included task success rate, completion time, error rate, and navigation efficiency, with occasional A/B testing for specific elements.

Constant communication with nurses provided qualitative insights into user preferences, helping refine the design to align with clinical standards and user needs. For example, during a chart configuration test, initial feedback revealed confusing workflows and unclear instructions. After revising the design and gathering more feedback, users completed the task faster and more successfully in the final test.

FINAL DESIGN - PATIENT DETAILS
FINAL DESIGN - PATIENT DASHBOARD
Results

Many of these redesigns and new features have been rolled out to select clients for clinical testing and regulatory review. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with participating hospitals reporting significant improvements in their daily workflows. By closing feature gaps with competitors, we have successfully attracted more new hospital clients worldwide, including Cleveland Clinic and Saint-Denis Hospital Center in France. Additionally, our renewal rate has increased from the 70% range to the 80%, reflecting stronger client retention. Seeing these updates drive higher satisfaction among our hospital partners has been incredibly rewarding.

Closing Thoughts

Our product and engineering teams have learned the value of involving users throughout the design and development process. This approach fostered trust and enthusiasm, keeping our hospital clients engaged every step of the way. Most importantly, knowing that my designs help improve patient outcomes has been incredibly fulfilling. Looking ahead, I’m especially excited about the next major feature, clinical notes AI, as I anticipate how AI will further enhance workflow efficiency for our users.