How to create a brand for a healthcare business

Here’s a practical guide to building a healthcare brand that connects.

1. Start with trust

Your brand is the first touchpoint for most people. Before they meet your team, walk through your doors, or hear your story, they’ve already made a subconscious decision about whether they trust you.

So ask yourself:

• Does our brand feel credible and professional?
• Does it show we care?
• Does it reflect the quality of our care and culture?

Example: Nourish

When Nourish launched, we set out to create an approachable, uplifting brand that helped people with diabetes feel supported and empowered to learn, take control, and make lasting lifestyle changes.

2. Get clear on your brand strategy

Before you get to logos or colour palettes, you need to define your brand’s core. That means:

• What you do best (your positioning)
• Who you’re for (your audiences)
• How you want to be seen (your personality)

Tip: Strategy comes first. Without it, your brand risks becoming inconsistent or forgettable.

Example: Therapy Hive

This new NDIS brand needed more than just a playful look—it needed to communicate structure for time-poor parents and referrers. We started with strategy, then built a brand that captured their promise: Where therapy thrives.

3. Create a visual identity that feels right

Good healthcare branding is clean, functional and accessible. Great healthcare branding goes further—it evokes trust and reflects your values.

Design should:

• Be recognisable and simple
• Reflect your clinical standards
• Work well across physical and digital formats

Example: Burnside Hospital

For Burnside Hospital, we evolved the brand to reflect its growing role in private health. We delivered a visual identity that felt contemporary and supported everything from hospital signage to specialist marketing and a revitalised website.

4. Tell a consistent story

Once you’ve built your brand, bring it to life everywhere:

• Website and social media
• Patient communications
• Internal documents and policies
• Signage, advertising, uniforms and more

Consistency = confidence. If your materials look and feel like they come from different organisations, people notice. And it chips away at trust.

5. Design for all your audiences

It’s not just about patients. Your brand needs to connect with:

• Referrers (e.g. GPs, allied health)
• Staff and potential recruits
• Government and funding bodies
• Families and community networks

Build messaging and materials with each audience in mind. What builds trust with one group might not work for another.

6. Make it real

A brand only works if it lives beyond your website or brochures. That means:

• Training your team to live it
• Embedding it in your culture and service delivery
• Letting it evolve with your organisation

Revisit your brand often. Make sure it’s still working.

Final thought

A clear, consistent, and human brand builds trust, attracts the right people, and helps your organisation grow in the right direction. Whether you’re launching something new, or evolving what you already have, it’s one of the most important investments you can make.

Need a hand? That’s what we do every day at Brighter Health.