Mark Ferencik
Mark Ferencik
Senior Director of User Experience @ Optum/United Health Group
Mark Ferencik is a Senior Director of User Experience at Optum, leading design and research for clinical decision support products. With over 20 years of experience in healthcare technology, Mark specializes in designing complex software for expert users, including clinicians working in high‑stakes, time‑constrained environments. His work emphasizes continuous user research, in‑clinic observation, and close collaboration across product and engineering teams to ensure digital tools align with real‑world clinical workflows.
Racing with AI: Designing Medical Software That Expert Users Actually Trust
Product teams are accelerating rapidly as artificial intelligence lowers the cost of ideation, prototyping, and feature development. In healthcare, this acceleration collides with a very real constraint: expert clinicians have less time than ever to provide feedback, and their tolerance for poorly targeted design is extremely low. A single incorrect assumption, missing data element, or unrealistic workflow can invalidate an entire research session.
This session explores practical UX strategies for producing high‑quality medical software under conditions of extreme speed and limited access to expert users. It focuses on continuous, lightweight user experience practices that help teams evaluate far more ideas while maintaining the precision required for clinical domains.