Creating easy-to-navigate digital HCP experiences with a Design System

A design system provides a reusable library of components – think of them as digital building blocks – supported by clear rules for layout, branding, and behaviour. These systems allow pharma teams to:

• Scale digital products efficiently

• Maintain brand consistency across HCP portals and patient websites

• Reduce development time and rework

• Enable local teams to customise safely within brand and UX standards

For development and design teams, design systems act as a shared source of truth. Once a component (like a CTA button, form field, or icon) is built, it can be reused without reinventing the wheel. This avoids duplication, reduces the need for custom code, and speeds up time to market.

Imagine you are travelling from, let’s say, London to Manchester. It’s 1998 and all you have is your trusty old copy of the A-Z map (no sat nav in those days!). To navigate without constantly having to refer back to your little old book, you rely on the road signs with their simple clean typography, consistent colour ways and symbols. You reach a junction and you know what to look out for, you aren’t sure what lane to be in, the sign posts guide you and by following these signs, as you are able to reach your destination.

The consistency and familiarity of the design of these signs allows you to process the information they’re providing quickly and efficiently in order to make decisions about where you should go, or an action you should take. 

Now take that methodology and apply it to a website or app. We’ve all become accustomed to looking for a magnifying glass in order to perform a search. On mobile interfaces, we know that tapping the three little lines (or "hamburger") at the top corner of the screen will likely open a menu. 

But what if your company had 10s or 100s of sites for multiple brands in many markets for your customers to navigate, each with their own brand teams overseeing them?

How do you keep them consistent? How do you make it easy for your users to navigate your sites, and for your teams to ensure they are following the same set of rules?

A design system! 

When elements are consistently applied across your digital ecosystem, HCPs or patients can focus on what matters - the content and services - not the navigation. This is especially important in pharma, where HCPs are often short on time and need to find clinical information quickly. A unified design system makes it easier for them to accomplish tasks without friction, regardless of the brand or market.

With a design system, we create a series of 'building blocks' that can be implemented over and over again for each of your sites or products. It’s a collection of reusable components, guided by clear rules, that can be used to build digital solutions at any scale.

Read more about the make up and structure of a design system here.

Your development team only needs to build each component once, and they can be utilised time and time again — no custom code, no snowflakes, just consistent, considered components that work together.

And, as such, the teams designing each of your sites know what they can do in terms of brand identity and personalisation, but also what limitations there are. This results in less back and forth and ultimately a much smoother, more efficient and cost-effective process.

When applied across multiple brands and markets, a design system helps create a seamless, consistent HCP journey. Key benefits include:

• Improved usability: Clear, familiar navigation reduces frustration and enables faster task completion

• Increased trust: A professional, consistent interface builds brand credibility and reinforces compliance

• Greater efficiency: Local teams work faster with defined components and fewer revisions

• Better outcomes: Smoother digital journeys lead to higher engagement and improved satisfaction

Finally, and most importantly, the digital experience is improved for your customers. No longer will HCPs have to navigate hundreds of different sites, each with their own style of ‘sign-posting’ users to functionality like rep callbacks, accessing dosing information, requesting samples, downloading content, and so on, 

With a consistent design system in place across all your digital touch points, they’ll know, whichever site they are on, how to navigate to get to what they are looking for, simply and easily. They’ll quickly begin to recognise the familiar page structures, icons, and calls to action, meaning they’re much more quickly and easily able to navigate to the information they’re looking for. 

You’ll demonstrate to your customers that your organisation respects their time and is doing all it can to make their lives as easy as possible when it comes to interacting with your products. 

The end result, you’ve made your processes more efficient, your CX smoother and ultimately, your customers are happier.

At Graphite, we specialise in creating and scaling design systems for the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector. Our experience working with global pharma brands means we understand the regulatory landscape, user needs, and organisational complexity involved in large-scale digital ecosystems.

If you're looking to improve your HCP digital experience and enable faster, more consistent delivery of digital solutions, we can help you design a system tailored to your needs.

Get in touch to learn how a design system can accelerate your digital transformation and deliver measurable results for both your teams and your HCP customers.