Regimen Ordering & Management
Oncology treatment planning sits at the intersection of clinical safety and extreme workflow complexity. I led end-to-end UX design on the initiative to rebuild Meditech's regimen ordering suite the most safety-critical touch-point in the oncology treatment workflow from fragmented, brittle forms into a unified, flexible system trusted by oncologists, pharmacists, and nurses across the care team.
I came to this work with nearly a decade as a pharmacy technician before transitioning into UX. That background isn't a footnote it's why I could read a prescription workflow the way a clinician does, and why stakeholders trusted me to define logic, not just layout.
My Role
Lead UX Designer
Domain
Oncology EHR
Time-frame
2022-2026
Platform
International EHR
Part 1 — Ordering a Regimen
The core challenge
When one wrong change could blow up an entire treatment plan
The existing ordering workflow was brittle by design. A single dose adjustment — substituting a fluid, recalculating BSA after a weight change, editing cycle 3 while leaving cycles 4–6 intact — could force a clinician to cancel the whole regimen and rebuild from scratch. In oncology, where patients are often immunocompromised and treatment windows are narrow, that brittleness wasn't just an inconvenience. It was a safety risk.
My pharmacy background meant I already understood why this was dangerous before I talked to a single user. The domain gave me immediate credibility with pharmacist stakeholders and let me move faster from research to design decisions.
“Ordering wasn’t just too complex it’s actually brittle. One small change could force us to delete and rebuild the whole regimen. That’s not sustainable or safe.”
What the research uncovered
Providers weren't struggling to place orders — they were afraid to change them
I conducted shadow sessions and interviews with prescribers actively managing multi-day regimens, pharmacists building fluid combinations, and QA nurses validating live treatment cycles. The clearest finding wasn't about usability in the abstract it was about hesitation. Clinicians would avoid adjusting a dose mid-cycle because they didn't trust what would happen to the rest of the regimen. That fear had a clinical cost.
Before
- Multiple screens required to order one regimen
- No interface support for dose variation by day or patient
- Substitutions required rebuilding from scratch
- BSA recalculations were manual and error-prone
- Unclear what a mid-cycle edit would affect downstream
After
- Modular per-day order groupings replace rigid static forms
- Inline scope controls: "Edit this day only" vs "Apply to future cycles"
- BSA recalculations triggered dynamically from patient data
- Fluid substitution without restarting the regimen
- Summary Before Submit with inline warnings and day-by-day preview
Key design decisions
Structuring the UI around how regimens actually behave — not how forms work
The original interface modeled a regimen as a flat form. But regimens aren't forms, they're time-structured, role-dependent, and conditionally branching. Replacing the form model with per-day order groupings organized by route and administration sequence (hydration → chemotherapy → recovery) made the structure immediately legible to clinical users without explanation.
The most impactful single interaction was the edit scope toggle. Providers needed to make changes at different granularity from a single day, a single cycle, or all cycles. The old system offered no way to distinguish between these. Naming the interaction explicitly ("Edit this day only" or "Apply to Cycle 2+") reduced hesitation more than any visual redesign did.
“Most clinicians don’t need help placing orders. They need help making changes without breaking the plan. That’s where UX can actually shine.”
Summary Before Submit
A final checkpoint screen with high-visibility dose and timing details, inline warnings for incompatible IV string volumes, and a day-by-day order preview — giving users one chance to catch errors before signing a high-risk order.
Auto-suggested substitutions
When a fluid or supportive medication needed to change, the UI surfaced equivalent alternatives rather than presenting a blank field. Validated against pharmacist-reviewed substitution logic in partnership with the pharmacy team.
Persistent change highlights
After testing, we added persistent visual indicators for recent edits so providers could always confirm what they changed and what it affected which addressed a core source of clinical anxiety surfaced during usability sessions.
Outcomes
Flexible ordering, measurable impact
The redesigned ordering experience reduced ordering time for common treatment plans by 15%, enabled dose adjustments without requiring clinicians to reset or rebuild regimens, and improved alignment between prescribers and pharmacists. It's now the standard preview experience across all oncology treatment plans in the platform, and has established the foundation for upcoming acute-focused regimen enhancements.
“Now we can adapt treatment without starting over. That’s a huge win.”
The safety gap
Part 2 — Previewing a Regimen
Preview wasn't a minor feature — it was where clinical trust broke down
Before a provider signs a set of oncology orders, they need one reliable way to see exactly what they're about to commit to: what's in the regimen, how it's sequenced, and whether it matches the treatment plan. In the existing system, that moment didn't exist in a trustworthy form. Preview tools were either missing, inconsistent between roles, or failed to reflect real-time updates after edits.
This wasn't just a design gap — it was a safety and clarity gap. Each user group (oncologists, pharmacists, nurses) had built their own workaround for validating orders, creating fragmented mental models and miscommunication across teams.
Research finding
Each role thought "Preview" meant something different
I led stakeholder interviews and collaborative white-boarding sessions across oncology, pharmacy, and nursing before writing a single wire-frame. The goal was to understand, not assume. What emerged was a sharp divergence in mental models:
Pharmacist
"I need to know which meds are grouped together and which fluids are running at specific rates — accuracy is everything for me."
Oncologist
"I want to see what's in the Regimen and what I see when I order it — a streamlined summary of treatment intent day by day, nothing more."
Nurse
"I need clear, accurate instructions — administration sequence and timing — to ensure safe medication delivery at the bedside."
The solution couldn't be one static view — it had to adapt based on who was looking and where in the workflow they clicked Preview. This insight drove the pivot toward a layered information hierarchy that flexes by role and context.
Design principles
Six principles that kept every decision honest
Early designs were technically comprehensive but cognitively overwhelming. Users got lost. I developed a set of guiding principles to distinguish between displaying information and communicating it — then used them to referee every design decision through the iteration cycle.
One source of truth for all roles
No more separate preview states per module. One view, adapted by context.
Progressive disclosure over total visibility
Surface what's most relevant now. Let users drill deeper when they need it — not all at once.
Clear information hierarchy
The most clinically critical information — dosage, timing, administration sequence — must be immediately scannable.
Accessibility as a baseline, not a checkbox
Screen reader support, contrast compliance, and dark/light mode readability were non-negotiable from the start.
Impact
Fewer clarification calls. More confident signings.
After implementation, pharmacists reported fewer requests back to prescribers for clarification before preparing orders. Oncologists expressed greater confidence before signing. Nurses reported fewer questions about administration sequence during treatment. The redesigned preview is now a core part of the ordering workflow and is being evaluated as a launch point for additional downstream workflows across product teams.
Part 3 — Managing a Regimen Over Time
The systems challenge
What the legacy system got wrong — and why it kept getting rebuilt
Regimen management was the part of the system that had seen the most prior redesign attempts, and the most failures. The reason wasn't a lack of effort. It was a fundamental mismatch between the interface model and the clinical reality of long-term treatment management. The system treated regimens as static objects. Clinicians manage them as living, evolving plans.
Strengths to build on
- Core functionality worked for simple plans
- Basic customization was supported
Weaknesses driving redesign
- Edits didn't sync between ONC and Pharmacy
- Hard cap of 12 treatment cycles
- Navigation fragmented across views
- Authorization logic inconsistent across sites
Opportunity
- Rebuild with flexible, future-proof components
- Standardize workflows across departments
- Differentiate meaningfully in the oncology EHR market
Constraints to design around
- High clinical risk with zero tolerance for errors
- Varied stakeholder needs risking scope creep
- Tight cross-functional coordination required
The core layout decision
Why infinite scroll beat tabs and accordions
Early in the design process, I tested three layout approaches for navigating multi-cycle treatment timelines. This was the single most consequential structural decision in the project, because the layout choice determined how well users could maintain orientation across a complex, longitudinal workflow.
Rejected
Tabbed views
Edit / History / Future tabs tested poorly — users lost context when switching, and couldn't hold the full timeline in mind at once.
Rejected
Accordion layout
Grouped by cycle, but users frequently missed details in collapsed sections. Felt like hiding complexity rather than managing it.
Chosen
Infinite scroll + fixed column
Continuous vertical scroll with a fixed left column for day-level context. Consistently tested best for orientation and continuity across complex multi-cycle regimens.
Selected approachThe key insight from testing was that users needed to see the regimen as a whole — past, present, and future — without losing their place. Infinite scroll enabled that longitudinal view. The fixed column anchored each row to its clinical context, preventing disorientation even when reviewing dozens of cycles.
Research and synthesis
Nine stakeholder interviews, one affinity map, five insight themes
I conducted interviews with nine internal stakeholders alongside external users — oncologists, pharmacists, nurses, and QA reviewers. To synthesize findings, I built an affinity map in Miro and grouped feedback into five recurring themes that became the feature prioritization backbone:
01 Edit intent
Users needed cycle-level, dose-level, and schedule-level edits — and the UI needed to make those distinctions explicit.
02 Safety and audit traceability
Every change had to be versioned, scoped to a specific cycle or day, and fully auditable for both intent and execution.
03 Timeline clarity
Users needed to navigate across past, active, and future cycles without losing orientation in the regimen.
04 Visual hierarchy and scannability
Text-heavy, undifferentiated screens were slowing decision-making. Critical information needed to be findable at a glance.
05 Documentation and communication gaps
Edits made by prescribers weren't reliably surfacing to pharmacy, creating downstream errors and duplicated work.
Design system contribution
Patterns built here are now used across the product
Beyond the regimen management feature itself, this project contributed new components to Meditech's design system: data table behaviors for clinical records, pill tag components for labeling dose types and statuses, and scroll/fixed-column patterns for timeline navigation. These patterns are now being reused in other product areas, compounding the impact of the original design work.
What I learned
Reflections
Five things this project taught me as a lead designer
1
Ambiguity is an invitation to lead
There was no established pattern for safe regimen preview or editing. I stepped in to lead discovery and shape a shared vision — which required leading discussions, not just facilitating them.
2
Time is part of the workflow
Cycles, substitutions, delays, and weight-based changes pushed me to design across treatment timelines, not just screen states. Every interaction had to respect clinical progression.
3
Comprehensive ≠ clear
Early prototypes showed everything — and overwhelmed users. Shifting to progressive disclosure meant reorganizing content, not reducing it. That's a harder and more valuable skill.
4
Trust is the true success metric
Every decision came down to one question: will the user trust what they see, and feel safe acting on it? Trust is both a design outcome and a clinical requirement.
5
Ownership doesn't end at handoff
I stayed with each feature through pilot implementation, developer handoff, and post-launch feedback. The best design impact is cumulative — it comes from staying close to outcomes.