Health Foundry
Health Foundry
Capability: Brand Positioning / Brand Identity
Location: London
Team: Project 00 / Claire Hartley
The advancement of digital technologies have been a game changer in advancing the pace of change in modern society; and not only because of the technological capabilities. Digital communication is shaping the way we live and work; helping people to better connect to communities where the ever increasing power of tech can be used to make social and economic impact.
Whilst healthcare wasn't necessarily the first industry to feel the disruptive impact of digital. With a growing and ageing population in an age old public funded healthcare system, it doesn't take an expert to see there are cracks appearing.
Increasingly there's an undercurrent of people focussed in this area mobilised by digital. Communities have begun forming and formulating potential solutions — both short-term patch-ups and long-term systemic hypothesis to help support the healthcare system or indeed forget what's there and build something agile to sit alongside the existing structure.
Trust in architecture & design
Guy's & St Thomas' Charity commissioned myself and Claire to develop the brand identity for the project whilst working closely with Tim at Project 00 who designed the space itself and continue to curate the programming.
An NHS Foundation Trust, Guy's & St Thomas' (G&ST) Charity has a long and illustrious history of championing world-class innovation for patients.
Having more recently become independent from the Department of Health, in creating Health Foundry, the trust is now setting a precedent not just in healthcare, but contributing to the blueprint of how all industries can mobilise, connect and integrate grass roots innovation into traditional or rigid industry structures.
The brand design brief needed to represent this new brand, 'Health Foundry' as the super-connector within this vast and complex network; offering young healthcare professionals and the wider tech industry a modern, dynamic and engaging brand platform where some level of ownership could be assumed. Whilst also granting the charity the credibility to attract real interest and talent.
Connecting the future
The secret to a great brand idea is simplicity. So when faced with creating a completely new and unknown brand for a project that's inherently embedded within, but must also operate outside of one of the most complex organisations on the planet; an organised and coherent process is vital.
Lucky for us, we were able to help the team at G&ST Charity to distil all that complexity into some key objectives which could translate into key emotional concepts to sit at the core of the brand.
Additionally, one of the key pieces of strategic intelligence from the briefing, was in the understanding that despite all big financial investment required, the charity couldn't over-impose themselves on the brand without it having detrimental impact on the credibility of the project.
With that in mind, we begun to unpick a concept that simply had patients best interests at heart; a truly user-centric brand. We began to understand that the key to the brands success would be everything the NHS wasn't.
And although of course structure was required, the initiative would simply act as the platform on which people and ideas could come together to better the shape of healthcare and wellbeing for patients.
Furthermore, we realised that the operational structure wasn't just about involving health professionals and techies; it's essential to involve the patient in the conversation.
All this lead to the key theme of connectivity, but not a simple connection between two points. We're talking about a super network of connections between an endless amount of potential nodes, with G&ST at the centre routing the traffic to the right places.
If you're interested in the future of healthcare or would like to know more about how this project came to be, get in touch...