Digital health in Latin America has grown quickly, but not always in a coordinated way. Member portals, online appointment booking, telemedicine, and digital credentials have all emerged, often coexisting under the same brand without truly connecting with one another.
Users notice the disconnect. They book an appointment in one place, access their prescription somewhere else, and make a payment through a third platform. The brand may be one, but the experience feels like three.
What is the core problem in healthcare?
The problem is cognitive load at a time of stress. No one opens a healthcare app feeling relaxed. They’re there because something hurts, because they’re waiting on a test or procedure, or because they need to get a treatment approved.
In that context, any ambiguity can quickly turn into anxiety. A generic error message isn’t just a UX detail. It’s a person not knowing whether their treatment is covered.
How does product design help?
It starts by bringing clarity to the language. Before touching the interface, we review how we communicate with members. “Procedure not authorized by medical review” doesn’t tell them much. “Your doctor still needs to upload the referral” does.
At Paisanos, we approach healthcare with three clear principles.
First: clarity over aesthetics. Second: fewer steps, with more certainty at every stage. Third: real accessibility, because the audience includes older adults and people with low vision.
Here, accessibility isn’t about regulatory compliance. It’s the difference between being able to solve something online or having to pick up the phone. Every call avoided has a measurable operational cost.
What about legacy systems?
They’re almost always there, and they’re not going away anytime soon. Clinical management and billing systems have often been in place for decades. Trying to replace them just to improve the app can turn into an endless discussion.
We take a different approach. We design an experience layer that connects to those systems and absorbs their complexity. The user sees a simple flow. Behind the scenes, there are integrations and business rules they never need to know about.
That layer also makes it possible to move forward incrementally. Appointments first, then authorizations, then reimbursements. Each release works on its own.
Which metric matters?
The key metric is the self-service rate: the percentage of tasks users can complete without human assistance.
It’s the right metric, but also one of the most misunderstood. Simply offering a feature doesn’t mean people will use it. Call center savings can help fund the project, but only when users are actually able to resolve things online.
In a 2024 MGMA survey, 73% of medical groups reported that only one quarter or fewer of their patients booked appointments using digital tools, while just 11% said more than half did. Having the functionality is not the same as achieving adoption. Self-service improves when basic friction is removed — reliable login, digital credentials, and real-time appointment availability — not when more features are added.
MGMA: MGMA Stat survey, November 2024 — Medical Group Management Association
There’s a strong temptation in this industry to keep adding features as a way to signal innovation. We usually recommend the opposite approach: first, make sure the things people use every day work really well.
A reliable healthcare portal is more valuable than a feature-packed one. Trust here is built by solving problems, not by surprising users.
If your healthcare product generates more calls than solutions, let’s take a look at it together.