When walking by a new clinic and deciding where to receive care, one of the first aspects that a patient will notice is the name and brand of the clinic. Is the name recognizable? What about the logo and colors? Do the provider names or partners sound familiar? These were some of the questions asked during last month’s site visit to LiveWell Clinics, one of our Innovations in Healthcare (IiH) innovators.
Last year, LiveWell Clinics joined the IiH network along with eleven other innovations from around the world. Like many of our innovators, LiveWell Clinics is a care delivery innovation that targets low-income, high-density populations in East Africa. With this population focus, it is a given that branding and distinguishing clinical services can be the biggest challenge, especially in the booming, competitive private health sector in Kenya.
LiveWell Clinics is overcoming this challenge by building off of existing brands with strong reputations and bringing their own high-quality services to secure clients. Grace Kamero, Chief Operating Officer at LiveWell Clinics, walked our team through these strategies during our time at the Kayole clinic.
To rapidly boost brand recognition and credibility for the clinic network’s name, Kamero explained that LiveWell Clinics is one of several partners with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a well-known, multinational pharmaceutical company. GSK recently launched an initiative called the Asthma Care Improvement Project focused on reducing the prevalence of asthma in Kenya. When LiveWell Clinics realized that this mission aligned with some of their health outcome goals for the region, they partnered with GSK and began community outreach to promote the program.
Together with GSK program representatives, LiveWell Clinics staff visit local schools and community centers to conduct asthma awareness campaigns. During these visits, potential patients are referred to the nearest LiveWell clinic for specialty care in asthma treatment. LiveWell is one of the select clinical networks to provide asthma inhalers and care in the region, an important stream of services given the high prevalence of respiratory diseases.
Through this branding relationship, LiveWell Clinics has acquired new customers who trust GSK’s referrals to their clinics and secured repeat customers due to their high standards for quality services and patient experience. A testament to this level of quality comes from LiveWell’s accreditation as a SafeCare-certified health provider, meaning that they meet quality standards as set by the PharmAccess Foundation of the Netherlands, the Joint Commission International of the USA, and the Council for Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa.
Using GSK’s world-renowned brand, and pairing this with a focus on quality care delivery, LiveWell Clinics is establishing their own name and building a quality brand across the country. As LiveWell continues expansion into new neighborhoods in Kenya and beyond, their name and brand will no doubt become synonymous with “quality” and “high standards of care”.
For those interested in supporting the scaling of LiveWell Clinics, through financial or other means, please contact Grace Kamero at gkamero@livewellclinics.co.ke. For more information about other innovators in the Innovations in Healthcare network, click here.