Healthcare & Life Sciences Innovation Case Studies

From Six Sigma to Disruption in One Week - Costa Rica

ICU Medical’s product and engineering teams were world-class at optimisation. The problem is that Six Sigma does not teach you how to disrupt. It teaches you how to reduce variance in what already exists. In a market that is changing fast, that is not enough.

We ran an intensive one-week intervention to help teams shift from an efficiency-first mindset to a disruptive innovation mindset. The focus was not more process. It was a different way of thinking about risk, learning, and customer evidence.

We trained teams on two foundations that are often missing in highly operational organisations: disruptive innovation principles and customer discovery interviewing. That combination gives teams a new way to spot opportunity, challenge assumptions, and learn faster from real customers instead of internal debates.

The output was tangible even within a week. Teams left with a shared language and a new way of working that makes it easier to move from “optimise” to “explore”, and from “opinion” to “evidence”.

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The Method That Improved Adherence Outcomes

Most adherence programmes fail because they ask doctors to do more work. Springer took a different approach. They wanted a methodology that fits inside real consultations, helps doctors spot adherence risk early, and gives them a practical way to intervene without turning every appointment into a counselling session.

Over 6 months across Europe, we worked with both doctors and patients to build a simple, repeatable adherence methodology. The goal was decision-grade clarity in the moment. What is the real reason this patient will not adhere, and what is the easiest fix that will actually stick.

The output was not just a framework in a slide deck. We created a structured 4-step questioning method and translated it into a self-paced online course that doctors could consume and apply without scheduling more training time. The result was a scalable approach Springer could deploy globally, designed to improve adherence first, while also reducing avoidable friction that contributes to doctor burnout.

Image of working on Features and behaviours

**Behaviour Change in the Middle East Is Not a Feature**

BRIDGE had an ambitious goal. Create a new, integrated healthspan experience for health-conscious consumers across the Middle East, combining multiple services and using AI to learn from individuals and make better recommendations over time. The context matters. The region is facing rapid growth in obesity and diabetes, so “nice wellness features” are not enough. Behaviour change has to be real, and it has to fit local reality.

Over 3 months, we ran deep discovery across multiple Middle Eastern cities, interviewing 40 people and also speaking with coaches, nutritionists, scientists and health experts. We paired that with competitive benchmarking across health apps, sports apps, gym platforms and nutrition products to identify what works, what fails, and where the opportunity was not being served.

What we found was not one user type. It was five distinct behavioural personas, each with different motives and different blockers. The biggest friction was not knowledge. It was context. Cultural norms, perceptions around exercise, an environment shaped by car culture and heat (less walking), and social life organised around eating. If the experience ignores those forces, it will look good on paper and fail in the wild.

We turned this into a decision-grade opportunity map with clear interventions, hypotheses, and recommendations on what to build and test. It also clarified how to connect services like gym membership, nutrition support, and lifestyle experiences (including a nutrition-focused restaurant, art and travel) into one coherent journey.

Image of professional doing user interview

The outcome was not just insight. It shaped the product roadmap for the app, informed prototypes and experiments, and influenced partnership and ecosystem decisions. In other words, it moved BRIDGE from “big vision” to “what we do next”, grounded in real behaviour in the region.

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Sanofi The Incubator Advantage Most Teams Miss: Better Questions - Spain

Sanofi did not need more startup energy. They needed fewer assumptions and faster proof. The goal was simple: help incubator startups accelerate product-market fit by using agile consumer psychology frameworks, so they could stop guessing and start making defensible decisions.

Over 2 months in Spain, we worked with the Head of Innovation and trained a cohort of 10 startups, mostly through group workshops (with additional support where needed). The focus was practical. We gave teams a repeatable way to get closer to their customers quickly, translate what they heard into behavioural insight, and turn that into sharper positioning and clearer next steps.

The deliverables were designed to be used immediately, not filed away.

Each startup left with interview scripts and a lightweight research plan, behavioural personas to anchor decisions in real motivations and barriers, and clear problem statements that cut through vague ambition and forced teams to define what they were actually solving. That then fed into a clearer value proposition narrative that could guide product direction and communication.

The outcome was speed and focus. Startups ran stronger discovery faster, reduced guesswork, and made better prioritisation decisions about what to build next (and what not to build). In an incubator setting, that is the difference between being busy and making progress.

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A Partner Portal Built on Evidence, Not Opinions - Switzerland

Takeda wanted to improve a B2B partner portal, but the real issue was not surface-level UX. The feature set was not aligned to what partners actually needed, which is why the experience felt harder than it should and adoption tends to suffer in these platforms.

Over 6 months in Switzerland, we ran partner discovery, mapped the end-to-end journey, and translated what we learned into clear feature recommendations and priorities. We then prototyped key flows and validated them through concept testing and walkthroughs with partners, so decisions were grounded in evidence rather than internal assumptions.

The outcome was practical. A set of validated concepts and prototypes were ready to take into build, giving Takeda a clear direction that reduced guesswork and increased confidence in what to ship next.

Image of a professional working on user flow

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Wayfinding Isn’t Signage. It’s Patient Time. - Spain

Hospital Clínic had a problem most hospitals quietly accept as “just part of the job”. Staff were being interrupted constantly by visitors, which pulls attention away from patients and drains energy across the day. The root cause was not rude visitors. It was broken wayfinding and a flow that forced people to interrupt staff just to get basic orientation.

Over 2 months in Barcelona, we worked across every department except ER. We observed real behaviour on the ground, mapped the most common visitor routes and questions, interviewed staff, and pinpointed the exact moments where the environment was creating avoidable interruptions. Then we designed, implemented, and iterated simple wayfinding and flow changes that staff could live with and visitors could understand.

The result was immediate. Interruptions dropped overnight. Staff got time and focus back, and patients benefited without the hospital needing a big transformation programme or new technology. It was a clear reminder of something many organisations forget. Small behaviour-led design changes can outperform large strategic initiatives when they remove friction at the source.

Discovery Skills for High-Value Sales Teams

Sales teams do not lose deals because they lack product knowledge. They lose because they ask weak questions and get polite answers that do not reveal real needs. Agilent wanted their customer-facing teams to improve how they understand prospects, so discovery calls produced decision-grade insight instead of vague notes.

We ran a hands-on customer discovery session for Agilent’s sales teams, teaching the question frameworks that uncover real drivers, constraints, and buying triggers. We also trained teams on how to decode what they hear, so insights translate into clearer next steps, better qualification, and more meaningful customer conversations.

The outcome was practical. Sales teams could ask better questions, surface more actionable insight, and use a repeatable approach that fits their existing sales process.

The Value Proposition Customers Actually Believe - UK

Reckitt did not have a product problem. They had a clarity problem. People did not recognise “dry eye” as something they had, and they misunderstood what causes it. When the diagnosis language is unclear, messaging fails, and you end up spending money educating the wrong thing.

Over 1 month in the UK, we ran customer discovery and built behavioural personas across the audience. We focused on how people describe symptoms in their own words, what they believe the causes are, and what triggers them to take action. Then we translated that into message options and tested them.

The work gave the brand a practical way to stop guessing. Instead of debating language internally, they ran online experiments to validate key hypotheses, identify the value proposition that actually landed, and choose the messaging direction based on evidence. The outcome was a clearer path to communication that fits how customers think, not how the category talks.