Redesigning Graphnet's Shared Patient Record

Starting With Evidence, Not Assumption

Graphnet needed to modernise CareCentric, a shared patient record used widely across the NHS, but wasn't going to get there by guessing. The brief came down to one question: what's actually working, and what isn't, for the people using it every day? That's not a question a general test panel could answer. CareCentric's users are GPs, consultants, community matrons and other healthcare professionals with real clinical knowledge, a small, specialist pool you can't just recruit off a testing platform. Getting real evidence meant getting in front of them directly.

A Day at Ascot

At the beginning of the project, we hired out Ascot Racecourse and spent the day in small groups going deep on two things: the live CareCentric platform, to surface real pain points from day-to-day use, and a static concept built around one specific idea, a reworked left-hand navigation, to see whether it actually held up. This was still discovery, not a finished redesign. Hours of one-to-one and small-group sessions gave us a genuinely detailed read on what was and wasn't working, and whether that navigation idea had real merit.

From Research to Recommendations

Ascot, along with a run of one-to-one sessions across the sprints, gave us a wealth of valid, reliable data on both that navigation concept and the existing platform. From there we moved straight into design, turning real pain points into real solutions, and speeding things up by adopting Google Material Design as our foundation. That gave Graphnet something real to build from: a workable component library and style guide, ready to take into further testing.

A Careful Handover

The final step was a full-day design thinking workshop with the Graphnet team, less a round of testing and more a considered handover. Working through the same core themes the whole project had built towards, data density, navigation and care plans, we dug into how the recommendations would actually be adopted, not just what they should look like. It gave Graphnet's own team the depth and ownership to take the work forward themselves.

What This Project Showed

Graphnet needed more than a redesign, they needed proof it would actually work for the people relying on it. Every step of this project answered that: real evidence from real healthcare professionals, running straight through to a design direction their own team could stand behind and own. That's the version of UX work I care about most, decisions earned through evidence, not assumption.