Trace
In Ireland, patients are their own healthcare record. Trace gives them somewhere to store it — a patient-owned platform bridging the public and private divide, with a consent-based way to share their full history with any clinician.
Ireland's healthcare system is split between HSE public and private providers, with no unified patient record. Scans get stuck between departments. Medication history is verbal. A €300 appointment can reveal an insurance gap the patient never knew existed. The patient is expected to carry their own health history in their head.
How might we give patients a complete, private view of their own health history — across all providers — without requiring those providers to change their systems?
This project started with four real moments.
A year-long waiting list with no tracking. A scan stuck between two departments. A €300 appointment where the doctor had incorrect family history. An insurance shortfall discovered only after the fact. These were not hypotheticals — they were the brief.
"The person who knows the least about your health history is often the doctor sitting in front of you."
Every existing tool solves one side of the problem.
HSEapp covers public care. Insurance apps cover claims. Apple Health sets the design bar. None bridge Ireland's public-private divide. None give a patient a way to share their full record with a doctor who has never met them.
"Trace is the layer that connects them."
Constraints, not aspirations.
Trust first. Inclusive by default. Autonomy over anxiety. Invisible effort. Whole person. Every screen was measured against these — if a decision spent the user's trust rather than earning it, it was cut.
Doctor initiates. Patient approves.
The doctor opens trace.health/view in any browser — no account, no download. A 4-digit code is generated. The patient enters it on their phone, sees the doctor's name and clinic, chooses exactly what to share, and optionally allows session notes. The direction of the code is what puts consent at the centre.
"Like Spotify Connect — the device requests, and you approve on your own phone."
Patient app and clinician portal.
The patient mobile app holds, adds to, and shares the record. The clinician portal at trace.health/view is read-only, entered only with a patient-approved session code, and shows only the sections the patient chose to share.
Doctor initiates.
Patient approves.
From first interaction to session end. The record stays private until the patient makes an explicit, informed choice.
Start
Code exchange
Consent
Live session
End
In every other concept, the patient initiates — so sharing happens before consent is explicit. In Concept B, the doctor initiates: the patient sees who is requesting and what they will see before agreeing to anything. The direction of the code is what puts consent at the centre.
Four sharing concepts.
One clear winner.
Each concept was assessed against the criteria that matter most for a consent-first health record. Concept B was the only one to score strongly across all six.
Concept B was the only one that turns sharing into a deliberate consent decision. The patient sees who is requesting access and what they will see before sharing anything, not after. The direction of the code is what decides who controls consent.
Doctor initiates.
Patient approves.
From first interaction to session end. The doctor initiates, the patient approves, and the record stays private until they do.
Structure before style.
Concept B refined into real screens and interactions before any visual design was applied. Every layout decision had to earn its place.
Every state defined
before any screen was built.
A complete UI kit across five categories — Actions & Forms, Navigation, Status & Feedback, Records & Data, and Cards & Containers — built before high-fidelity work began to keep consistency enforced from the start.
Patient app and
clinician portal.
Starting from lived experience gave the project a clear point of view that held all the way through to the final prototype — the brief never felt abstract.
The doctor-initiates consent model turned out to be more than a UX pattern. It became the product's core value proposition: the only concept where sharing is a deliberate consent decision.
Build the full consent and session flow as a working prototype — including the live back-and-forth between patient app and clinician portal.
User research with older and lower digital-literacy patients to test the 4-digit code handoff in a realistic clinical setting.