Qt Group has launched Clate, an AI-native design tool specifically built for embedded medical device interfaces that eliminates the need for designers to code while ensuring patient safety through proper visual hierarchy, semantic color coding, and real-world hardware optimization.
- Clate addresses a critical gap: 59% of embedded UX designers recognize they need a new tool, but no existing solution accounts for resource-constrained medical device hardware.
- Patient safety is paramount: Poor interface design contributes to preventable harm, such as insulin pump misreadings and difficulty locating critical pacemaker controls during emergencies.
- AI-native, no-code workflow: Designers can use natural language prompting to generate and refine screens without coding expertise, while developers receive production-ready QML code.
- Real-world performance monitoring: Built-in tools track frame rates and memory footprint in real-time, ensuring interfaces perform safely on actual medical device hardware.
- Beta launch underway: Full feature suite arrives in early 2027, with hardware optimization features rolling out shortly after initial release.
Qt Group announces Clate, a purpose-built design tool for designers creating real-world embedded user interfaces. It is built to remove the need to rely on generic web and mobile design tools and give embedded UI/UX designers a no-code, AI-native environment, allowing designers to own the complete user experience, even on resource-constrained hardware.
The widespread adoption of smartphones has raised users’ expectations of how an interface should look and feel, and embedded devices are no exception. But designing for an embedded device is fundamentally different due to the severe resource limits present on the target hardware. So far, incumbent design tools have failed to recognize this nuance. Most are built for web and mobile, and the UI they produce simply won’t perform on real-world devices. While niche tools for embedded UX design do exist, these lean so heavily on code editing that designers are pushed out of the process. In these workflows, UI and UX designs are routinely compromised, as both design and development teams struggle to optimize for complex target hardware.
This is extremely vital for designers working on medical device interfaces that have a direct impact on patient safety. For example, when a patient using an insulin pump misinterprets a low blood glucose reading on a low-contrast screen and accidentally delivers an insulin dosage, or when a clinician during cardiac distress takes seconds to locate a critical control on a pacemaker programmer because the display lacks clear visual hierarchy, the consequences can cause unnecessary stress and could impact patient safety.
Yet, traditional healthcare software often plays it safe by removing visual cues, yet over-simplified displays frequently lack clear visual hierarchy, standardized semantic color coding, and unified design systems. In its Top 10 Health Technology Hazards Report, an independent patient safety organization, ECRI, found that implementing healthcare technologies without fully understanding the workflow of users can lead to device usability issues that contribute to patient harm.
Designers themselves recognize this gap, as previous research by Qt Group revealed, with 59% of embedded UX designers recognizing that they would benefit from a new tool. Yet, when asked, most of them couldn’t describe what that new tool might look like, because no existing tool can fill that gap.
"For too long, embedded UI/UX designers have had to compromise their work, using web-centric tools that simply don’t account for real-world hardware constraints. We created Clate to end that compromise, and to give designers back full control and ownership of the user experience. Especially in Medical Devices UI, it is important to understand that semantic color matters more than brand color and visual hierarchy is a safety feature. While caution is necessary, delivering simple and easy-to-use interfaces is what matters," says Antti Kujala, Vice President, Design Products at Qt Group, said, “With AI-native workflows, designers can refine screens using natural language without needing deep code expertise, ensuring the safety-critical layout they design is precisely what patients need and clinicians see on the floor.”
Clate addresses this crucial design gap and empowers designers to own the full user experience of embedded applications. This will enable them to create risk reducing, and readable interfaces directly on medical devices, turning screen design into an active layer of patient care with capabilities including:
● AI-Native Integration: Includes natural language prompting for actions such as screen generation and design changes, leveraging MCP for direct connection with other design and productivity tools.
● Real-World UI Behavior: Allows designers to set their own variables, data bindings, animations, and interactions while monitoring performance metrics such as real-time FPS and memory footprint.
● Intuitive, No-Code Workspace: An interface built for designers to feel at home, with all the features they are used to, including infinite canvas, hierarchy trees, asset management, component libraries, and context-aware property controls.
● Seamless Handoff: Clate produces production-ready QML code, a declarative programming language specifically for the building of user interfaces. With this output, developers can build around what the designer hands over, rather than rebuilding it.
“Clate is a crucial addition to our product portfolio, delivering on our promise to support customers at every phase of the product development lifecycle. Clate eliminates the need for designers to know code and developers to manually rebuild designs from scratch, accelerating release cycles and improving overall product quality. Powered by Qt’s proven framework, which already underpins over a billion devices, Clate will also deliver design-time performance awareness," adds Thilak Ramanna, Senior Vice President at Qt Group. "This built-in monitoring will allow teams to design within the limits of key embedded hardware resources like frame rates and memory footprint, ensuring that the medical devices maintain a seamless and dependable performance helping manufacturers deliver safer and user-friendly medical devices to market faster.”
Clate is initially launching into beta first, with the full suite of planned features set to arrive in early 2027. At launch, users will have access to its intuitive, no-code workspace, AI Assistants and integrations and production-ready QML code output. Embedded hardware optimization features, such as frame rate and memory consumption checking, will be available shortly after the initial release.
