Health Consent App

Designing a digital experience to support informed patient consent

Overview

This project focused on designing a simple, accessible mobile app to support the capture of patient consent preferences around health data sharing. The aim was to enable patients to make informed decisions about how their data is used, both for their care and for secondary purposes like service improvement or research. The app needed to be clear, inclusive, and capable of managing complex information in a way that was easy to understand and interact with.

This project was delivered in collaboration with Connected Health Cities (CHC) and the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA), exploring the feasibility and complexity of enabling users to grant third-party access to parts of their health records for the development of new drugs and therapeutic research.

My contribution

- Product strategy
- Product design & prototyping
- Design consultation & wireframing

The team

- Client project team
- 1x Product designers

Year

2018-19

Product brief

To design a prototype app that captures consent preferences from patients, clearly explaining how their health data may be used, and recording decisions in a structured, GDPR-compliant format.

Key deliverables

  • Mapped the complete user journey — from login and identity capture to consent decision-making and confirmation.

  • Designed layouts for each consent question, including response formats (radio buttons, checkboxes) and links to supporting content.

  • Created simple, scrollable content structures for help text, external resources, and embedded media to explain each data use case.

  • Ensured each consent decision was structured, auditable, and recorded with time, context, and reference — in line with GDPR guidance.

  • Explored visual and interaction approaches for users with impaired vision or hearing, including text-to-speech and colour-safe design.

  • Followed branding and colour guidelines to ensure familiarity, trust, and compliance with public sector design expectations.

Above left: High-fidelity wireframes
Above right: Initial brief documentation

Process

  • Defined a linear user journey with a clear question > info > decision structure

  • Collaborated with subject matter experts to shape consent language that was clear but comprehensive

  • Iterated on page structure options (multi-screen vs. single-page scroll) to maximise usability

  • Reviewed information presentation to ensure compliance with GDPR consent best practice

  • Designed interaction components to support flexibility for future use cases, including research, service planning, and clinical sharing.

Challenges

  • Presenting complex and sensitive information in a clear, non-technical way

  • Ensuring patients felt empowered, not overwhelmed, by the consent process

  • Creating a format that was equally suitable for low-digital-literacy users and informed decision-makers

  • Accommodating future extension for different research funders and data recipients without overloading the UI.

Outcome

The project resulted in a clear, structured app design that supports informed consent, balancing clarity, user experience, and regulatory compliance. The final outputs included:

  • A tested interaction model for multi-question data consent

  • A modular page framework suitable for expansion

  • Clear examples of how to present data use cases, consent options, and granular control

  • Design decisions aligned with ICO and GDPR consent standards, laying the groundwork for a trusted digital consent service.

A few months after the project concluded, I followed up with the project lead at CNC for feedback. The work was seen as a success, not only meeting the brief, but also surfacing several important considerations that hadn’t been initially scoped, prompting further discussion and exploration.