The cross-sector innovation project PreCare – Community Health Innovation is working towards innovating the healthcare system from a user-centered approach – notably through the innovative concept: Nærklinikken. The ambition is to create a new holistic healthcare service where citizens are given tools to understand and act on their own chronic illness in close contact with the specialized professionals who know them. Based on the needs of each citizen, Nærklinikken is guided by a vision of a more sustainable healthcare system that offers people help to prevent and manage a life with chronic illnesses.

Engaging communication

We worked with Nærklinikken on naming the clinic, a core narrative and a visual identity for this new service. How do you communicate to a diverse target group of which many might be skeptical or reluctant to try out new services? In close collaboration with PreCare, we developed and designed a completely new visual language for the healthcare system to communicate to its users.

Warm, welcoming and non-institutional 

With the visual identity we set out to radically change the way the healthcare system tends to look, feel and sound. We wanted the Nærklinikken identity to be warm, welcoming and non-institutional. Working with a core narrative with an emphasis on security, freedom and quality of life, the tone-of-voice and visual identity communicate directly to the citizens in an informal, friendly and welcoming way. The identity is accessible and underplays the underlying systemic narrative in favour of the stories that the target group needs to hear: this is a service for and by humans – and it works. Through the use of icons, drawings and illustrations, Nærklinikken is now able to explain complex ideas and processes in an engaging manner to potential users, professionals and the general public. 

"We have been really pleased with the collaboration with Urgent.Agency. They have played an important role in giving NærKlinikken its current form and identity with their innovative thinking in terms of design and expression. They have managed the fine balance between making things fit into the existing context and at the same time challenging this - something that is crucial in an innovation project like PreCare."

–     Hanne Stald Poulsen, Specialkonsulent, Region Sjælland

Now, more than ever, we need to rethink our healthcare services and reap the rewards that technology offers. But at the heart of any endeavour there must be human understanding and empathy. With this mindset, we have developed a communication concept, user approach, identity, and design execution for Nærklinikken – a new service for chronically ill patients suffering from COPD, diabetes and related illnesses.

Engaging communication

We worked with Nærklinikken on naming the clinic, a core narrative and a visual identity for this new service. How do you communicate to a diverse target group of which many might be skeptical or reluctant to try out new services? In close collaboration with PreCare, we developed and designed a completely new visual language for the healthcare system to communicate to its users.

Warm, welcoming and non-institutional 

With the visual identity we set out to radically change the way the healthcare system tends to look, feel and sound. We wanted the Nærklinikken identity to be warm, welcoming and non-institutional. Working with a core narrative with an emphasis on security, freedom and quality of life, the tone-of-voice and visual identity communicate directly to the citizens in an informal, friendly and welcoming way. The identity is accessible and underplays the underlying systemic narrative in favour of the stories that the target group needs to hear: this is a service for and by humans – and it works. Through the use of icons, drawings and illustrations, Nærklinikken is now able to explain complex ideas and processes in an engaging manner to potential users, professionals and the general public.