vitalspace
Overview
Strategy // Brand // Digital Product // Architectural Design // Firm: Cactus
In 2022, Cactus was approached by the Wellstar Medical system with the prompt: How do we re-imagine primary care for the next generation? Over the last two years Vitalspace was conceived; a novel combination of digital systems, physical spaces, and brand identity that radically re-imagines the front door to Wellstar as a medical system, improves access to care, and allows for doctors to work from anywhere within the health system.
Working with a core group of Wellstar faculty, administrators, and staff, the our team identified a target demographic of users aged 22-32 during a target research phase. These users, often getting off of their parents insurance, represent a huge growth market for the health system. Vitalspace was designed to address the health needs that most affect this demographic and pulled design and operational cues from other
successful non-traditional healthcare models.
To facilitate this, we created a new healthcare role, the Care Counselor. Designed to be part care coordinator, part coach, and part patient advocate. The Counselor would be patients day to day contact at Vitalspace serving as a trusted partner in their healthcare that would connect them to the right resources within the health system from a single digital or physical location.
The Cactus team developed the design guidelines to make a cohesive product that would span both the digital and physical environments of Vitalspace. Additionally, the physical architecture was distilled down to 4 key spaces. A welcome space/lobby for front of house functions, assessment rooms for all diagnostics and tests, physician studios in other Wellstar locations that allow for doctors to remote in to meetings with the patient and care counselors, and finally the star of Vitalspace, the Consult Room.The consult room is designed to foster a conversation between visitors and their care counselors, a stark departure from the traditional exam room.
To test these ideas we proposed a physical prototype, a brand, and a pilot version of the Vitalspace App. An initial set of clinicians and a small group of research participant patients will run through this simulation to test the teams assumptions and pull new learnings that will be applied to future versions of this concept.