Hi, I'm Helen, the founder of Momentum.
From my first days working in healthcare communications back in 2007 until now, the area I've found the most exciting and motivating has always been experience design.
Whether it was the total privilege of spending time with patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals to really understand what they're going through and where we could change it for the better, or the fun and creativity that came with designing how we could improve it, I've always known that if I ever took the massive leap to start an agency of my own, this is where it would be.
Ultimately, I think it's our experiences that really matter. They shape our memories, leave their mark, and fundamentally sit at the core of who we are. Health is just no different.
Our health experiences stay with us. I remember to this day my terrible BCG injection experience, I have the scar and the fear to prove it. I'll also never forget the kindness and care my family experienced at an end-of-life hospice a few years back. Everything from the bed placement, so there was a view of the field and animals outside, to the food, to the communication and the care team. Just a couple of examples, but these experiences will be with me forever.
Almost more important than the memory our experiences leave is the impact they have on what we believe and what we do in the future. How we view our own health. How we approach the healthcare system. How we engage with treatment. How we adopt new technologies. The list goes on.
But I really believe that if we want to see meaningful, positive results from the amazing innovations and solutions we're developing in health, we have to ensure the experience we create around them stacks up. You can have the best solution out there, but if people are too scared to show up for the appointment, too overwhelmed or confused to take the medicine, too frustrated by the process, or just not sure it takes priority in their wider life commitments, it simply won't succeed.
And it's not just about a single discipline
When I've been working through what this business is about, chatting to old clients and colleagues, it has struck me how much we continue to put everything in a familiar box or silo. Not necessarily because we want to, but because that's how we're set up to do it.
We start with the healthcare solution, the molecule, product or service. We look at the clinical development and education. We talk about brand and customer experience, or system and service design, or product and software development, or behaviour change and patient engagement. We commission work from each discipline at different moments in time. All the work is fab, all the problems we're solving are valid, but more often than not we're working independently of one another.
I just kept thinking: why can't it be about all of it? Who is looking at the whole?
Don't get me wrong, I really get that there's a specific expertise and craft associated with all of these disciplines, and I'm not suggesting for one second that we want to lose that specificity. But I was struggling to see why we couldn't put all of those experts together to really think about it holistically.
So this is me, and this is what Momentum is all about
It's about bringing together a diverse set of experts, focusing them on a specific challenge, and ensuring we consider all angles, so that together we can create health experiences that have a lasting impact.
Come and build something with us →
Helen