This summer, Corporate Insight attended a webinar, Designing Healthcare in the AI Era, featuring pediatric medical device and product designer Jules Sherman and Figma senior director Amber Bravo. In the webinar, Sherman shared her research and design methods for producing a variety of healthcare products, followed by a discussion with Bravo on how the healthcare design process has changed, leaving attendees with resources to help improve their own design methods using AI tools.
An example: One of the medical devices discussed in the webinar was Trach Sense, a device and app that monitors infants with a tracheostomy tube. Accidental tube removal and blockages cause many tracheostomy-related emergencies, and these events often happen at home, where caregivers have no real-time monitoring and rely on visual checks alone. Sherman’s companion app connects to the infant’s tracheostomy tube and tracks its status. When it detects a potential complication, it sends caregivers an immediate alert with visual, haptic or audio cues to guide their response. Trach Sense brings hospital-level monitoring to children living with a tracheostomy at home or in long-term care facilities.
Sherman’s research found that caretaking obstacles are turning parents into innovators. In a STATNews article, Sherman says, “The healthcare system has shifted hospital-level responsibilities onto families, often without equipping them with the training, tools or support needed to do it safely.”
Corporate Insight’s Health Plan Monitor and Health System Monitor research points to the same gap. CI’s continuous tracking of digital experiences finds insurers, as seen in our recent Mobile Virtual Assistants Health Plan Monitor report, and health systems, as seen in our recent Patient Portal Virtual Assistants report, have invested more in self-service digital tools, like portals and virtual assistants, than in live navigation or peer support services for caregivers managing complex care at home. That gap likely falls hardest on caregivers in rural areas or without access to post-acute facilities, who have fewer alternatives when self-service tools fall short.
Sherman calls for two policy changes: updating Medicaid reimbursement codes to match current equipment performance standards rather than outdated pricing benchmarks, and building reimbursement and oversight mechanisms that push durable medical equipment suppliers toward physician-ordered, evidence-backed devices instead of the lowest-cost default. CI’s Health Plan Monitor research tracks a related trend: In a recent update, our team noted that Cigna is building tools to steer members toward preferred equipment vendors, often shaped by benefit-design incentives rather than clinical fit. That dynamic is the commercial-side counterpart to the reimbursement problem Sherman describes on the public side.
“If we have the tools to sustain life, we have a responsibility to ensure those tools are accessible, functional and safe at home, not just in the ICU,” Sherman said.
Good design is an act of care. It is intentionally aware of people’s needs and ensures what designers hear from users is being implemented in the result. To do this, Sherman built the Trach Sense design in Figma, which encodes responsive layouts and interaction details. She connected an AI assistant directly to the design file using Figma’s Dev Mode, which exposes the underlying code and specs. This lets her treat the AI as a thought partner, running qualitative questions against her design flow and user research data from caregiver interviews to pressure-test her own work. Her AI-enhanced approach stays rooted in a deliberate, human-centered read of what people need.
Health plans and health systems face a version of the same shift: more care now happens outside their walls, through home monitoring and caregiver-facing tools, and their digital experiences must catch up. For more insights into digital innovation in the healthcare space, check out our healthcare research services as well as our subscription offerings in four areas: Health Plan, Health System, Medicare and Pharmacy. And don’t forget to check out our Insights section for more industry trends and best practices in the healthcare space.
Bianca Falcone
Bianca Falcone is an analyst on CI's healthcare research team.