How experience design is rewriting the future of care

For most of us, the experience of healthcare hasn’t been particularly inspiring. It’s fluorescent waiting rooms, crowded GP surgeries, cluttered desks, and rushed appointments. Generally, don’t seek it out unless something is wrong.

However, in recent years, we’ve seen that model start to break down. Around 80–90% of healthcare costs are now tied to chronic diseases – the slow-burning conditions that shorten lives and reduce quality of life. Treating them reactively is expensive and unsustainable, which is why a new wave of brands and founders is working to shift healthcare from an emergency intervention to an ongoing ritual, resulting in a more proactive way of living.

To succeed, though, these services can’t just be clinically effective. They also need to feel desirable, which is where design plays a critical role. It has the power to motivate people to consistently engage with their health year after year.

Diagnostics reimagined

Few companies embody this shift more clearly than Neko Health, the Swedish startup co-founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Spotify’s Daniel Ek. Its mission is simple but radical: to create a proactive healthcare system.

“Today’s model is reactive, as you see a doctor only once you’re sick,” Hjalmar explains. “That worked 100 years ago, when most health problems were acute or infectious. But now, the big question is: how do we shift from reactive to proactive healthcare, focused on protecting health rather than just treating disease?”

At Neko’s clinics in London and Manchester, members can book a full-body health scan for £300. It takes less than an hour and covers everything from cardiovascular health to skin conditions. Traditionally, the equivalent would cost thousands and require days of appointments. To make it viable, Neko had to design and engineer its own devices in-house, becoming both a medical device manufacturer and a healthcare provider.

What makes Neko remarkable is not just the technology but the experience. The clinics resemble nothing like hospitals, and each space is carefully tailored to its building and city, yet instantly recognisable as Neko. Scan rooms are standardised, but the wider interiors use lighting, textures, and materials that feel closer to a cultural space than a clinic.

“If people dread coming, it won’t work,” says Hjalmar. “Our aim is for members to look forward to returning, so the environment has to inspire as well as deliver medical quality. Healthcare spaces should be as well-designed and beautiful as restaurants or cultural spaces.”

There’s no doubt that their approach works too, as eighty per cent of members return annually for their check-up, and tens of thousands are on the waiting list. That level of engagement is rare in healthcare, and design is one of the key reasons people continue to come back.

Treatment as ritual

Diagnostics are only part of the equation. If Neko is the “what’s wrong”, spaces like Sweat Lounge are the “what’s next.”

Founded by American entrepreneur Allison Huff, Sweat Lounge is the UK’s first dedicated infrared sauna studio. She discovered the therapy while recovering from a back injury in Texas, where infrared is mainstream, and was struck by how absent it was in Britain.

The space she created in London feels closer to a retreat than a clinic. The front of house is designed in “desert in the day” colours, with warm, sandy neutrals with brighter accents. Step into the sauna area and the palette shifts to “desert at night”, with moodier tones that encourage relaxation.

“The intersection of design and customer experience is where real change happens,” Allison says. “When someone walks into a space that feels warm, calming, and designed for them, their entire mindset shifts. Attendance goes up, consistency improves, and with consistency come better outcomes, physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

Sweat Lounge is consciously positioned between lifestyle and science. Its spaces feel soothing and luxurious, but the brand makes clear that infrared therapy is backed by research. Members report a range of benefits, including pain relief, faster recovery, better sleep, and improved skin.

Allison also has ambitious plans for the future, including Sweat Bars in gyms and additional flagship Sweat Lounges across the country. It’s a sign of how proactive treatments, once niche, are becoming part of mainstream health culture.

Wellness as lifestyle

At the other end of the spectrum is Rebase Recovery, a private members’ club in Marylebone that describes itself as a “social wellness club.”

Its offering – ice baths, saunas, recovery treatments – leans more toward lifestyle and community than clinical diagnostics, but its design choices still reflect the wider shift. Natural textures, soft lighting, and a journey that flows from arrival to recovery are all intended to make health feel approachable rather than intimidating.

As the team behind Rebase puts it: “We show the science clearly but wrap it in warmth, the precise treatments in spaces that feel human, calming, and approachable.”

It’s more exclusive than accessible, but it demonstrates how the boundaries between health, wellness, and leisure are blurring, and how design is the glue holding it together.

Advertising without the hard sell

If interiors and interfaces are central to changing how we experience healthcare, communications are just as important. The way health brands advertise themselves must strike a balance between credibility and approachability. People don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to when it comes to something as personal as their health and well-being.

Neko’s recent campaign for its recently opened Manchester clinic shows how this can be done. Rather than pushing technology or plastering logos across the city, the brand released a powerful film spotlighting local residents, titled ‘A love letter to Manchester’.

The video doesn’t focus on medical equipment or statistics. Instead, it celebrates how people contribute to their communities and positions proactive health as something that helps them continue doing what they love.

It’s barely branded, with Neko’s presence felt more in tone and intent than in overt messaging. This approach demonstrates how healthcare advertising is evolving to focus less on selling appointments and more on building trust and integrating health into everyday life.

Designing for trust and engagement

What unites these examples is the understanding that health is no longer just about outcomes, but about experiences. To encourage people to be proactive, environments have to overcome centuries of negative associations with medicine.

That means making subtle but important design decisions, from referring to people as “members” rather than “patients” to designing interiors that feel like cultural spaces rather than clinics. It also means communicating data in clear, visual ways to speak to the masses (not just the tech bros) and building rituals that transform obligation into desire.

The balance is delicate because, if you lean too far into wellness aesthetics, credibility suffers, and if you lean too far into clinical design, people disengage. However, when the two are balanced, as Neko and Sweat Lounge show, the results can be transformative.

A holistic future

Proactive healthcare is an ecosystem, not just a single product. You need diagnostic spaces that provide the data, treatment spaces that help you act on it, and lifestyle spaces that support long-term habits.

The fact is that design is the common thread that ties everything together. It shapes how we interpret our health, how often we engage with it, and whether we see it as an obligation or a privilege.

The future of healthcare may not look like a traditional GP’s office at all. It might look like a lounge, a spa, or even a café. It will be defined by places where people feel comfortable, motivated, and empowered. As long as the science is sound, that shift could be the key to making proactive health a mainstream reality.