NXT fusion

Just ask our friends at NXT, a non-profit research collaborative dedicated to advancing innovation in the delivery of patient care. We’re working with them to develop a brand  and audience engagement strategy that will allow them to facilitate some of the most exciting research initiatives we’ve come across in a long time.

For example, NXT has already successfully led two research projects sponsored by the Department of Defense: an architectural study in collaboration with the Clemson University Architecture + Healthcare program on the Patient Room of the Future, as well as an Electronic Medical Record interoperability program. Today, they’re working with MIT scientists on the development of health management tools within the hospital room that make it easier to manage multiple physician specialists, communicate with off-site family members, and access all medical records. At the same time, they’re working with Clemson architecture students on the Provider Room on the Future, exploring new layouts in room design, materials, workflow and communications within the exam room setting.

While these in-hospital communications tools and facility design projects are integral to health care today, people like Tom Jennings and Salley Whitman will tell you that real health care innovation will ultimately happen within the home: in designing tools that will directly link patients to their healthcare providers in real-time. They’re on a mission to bring together other health care planners, product development experts, facility designers, nurses, IT professionals and behavioral scientists from all over the world to make sure this kind of out-there thinking happens right here. Right now.

Imagine cooking 500 hot meals every day from a 300 sq. ft. kitchen. For 20 years or so, the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen had been operating out of a church kitchen and dining room, while the need to serve more meals just kept growing.

The board embarked on a capital campaign to raise money to build a new Soup Kitchen facility. While their case for support was sound, they lacked the packaging and community awareness to make the campaign a success.

So the CreateAthon team went to work on developing a new brand identity, outdoor campaign, and web site to re-introduce the Soup Kitchen as a vital part of the community. These outlets gave the Soup Kitchen the marketing foundation it needed, but the team didn’t stop there. Lee Price, Julie Smith, Tim Floyd and Teresa Coles developed a strategy for the Soup Kitchen that would help attract individual gifts to the Soup Kitchen well beyond the capital campaign. More to come in Part 2.