Designing Preventive Healthcare from the Ground Up

Fujifilm & DKHC

Reimagining cancer screening as a calm, human-centered service — shaping the brand, experience, and operational model behind NURA, an AI-driven healthcare platform launched in India and built for global scale.

Timeline

15 months (Nov 2019 – Feb 2021)

Team

Visual Design Lead – Shruti Kabo ・ Design Directors – George Mathews, Sapna Behar ・ Design Research & Service Design – Shruti Kabo, Shraavya Komaravolu, Varshapriya R, Aparna Rajapopalan, Aravinda Devaramane, Siddharth Sarvagyam ・ Identity Design – Sahir Kallan

Scope

Design Research, Service Design, CX Strategy, Brand and Visual Identity, Health Report UX, Touchpoint & Environmental Design, Global Operational Documentation & Playbook Design

Designing Preventive Healthcare from the Ground Up

Fujifilm & DKHC

Reimagining cancer screening as a calm, human-centered service — shaping the brand, experience, and operational model behind NURA, an AI-driven healthcare platform launched in India and built for global scale.

Timeline

15 months (Nov 2019 – Feb 2021)

Team

Visual Design Lead – Shruti Kabo ・ Design Directors – George Mathews, Sapna Behar ・ Design Research & Service Design – Shruti Kabo, Shraavya Komaravolu, Varshapriya R, Aparna Rajapopalan, Aravinda Devaramane, Siddharth Sarvagyam ・ Identity Design – Sahir Kallan

Scope

Design Research, Service Design, CX Strategy, Brand and Visual Identity, Health Report UX, Touchpoint & Environmental Design, Global Operational Documentation & Playbook Design

Key Contributions

  • Led design research to understand emotional barriers around cancer screening and inform service tone and flow

  • Developed the brand identity, including naming, visual language, and environmental aesthetic

  • Designed the end-to-end service journey, mapping each touchpoint to reduce anxiety and promote autonomy

  • Created visual and UX design for all customer-facing artefacts — including kiosks, robes, wayfinding, and reports

  • Designed the NURA Health Report, making medical data accessible and actionable for asymptomatic users

  • Led the design team for the operational playbook for global rollout across 3 countries and 10+ centres

  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams including doctors, AI specialists, and implementation leads to ensure consistency across digital and spatial experiences

Setting the Stage

In India, cancer screening is largely reactive — limited awareness, social stigma, and diagnostic systems that activate only once symptoms appear. Early detection , which dramatically improves treatment outcomes, was an untapped opportunity.

Fujifilm, a global leader in medical imaging, and Dr. Kutty’s Healthcare partnered to launch NURA, a first-of-its-kind AI-assisted cancer and lifestyle screening service designed for asymptomatic individuals.

Our brief was expansive: build the brand, service model, experience design— not just for a single location, but for a system that could scale globally.

In India, less than 10% of cancers are detected at an early stage — not because we lack the tools, but because people don’t screen when they feel healthy.

Understanding the Challenge

Unlike diagnostics, screening demands a mindset shift — proactively checking for illness when you feel perfectly healthy. In India, this isn’t a common behavior. Most people seek care only when symptoms appear, and when it comes to cancer, fear and stigma further deter early action.

To introduce a new category of healthcare, we had to design not just a service, but an act of reassurance — one that invited asymptomatic individuals to step in, feel safe, and return with trust.

My early research focused on the emotional and behavioral factors shaping preventive health decisions. This included:

  • Creating visual stimulus to test value propositions that addressed fear and hesitation around screening

  • Conducting interviews to understand user expectations, preferences, and psychological barriers

  • Synthesizing insights into a brand narrative that aligned with user values and supported the service experience

Crafting the Approach

Our approach began with listening — to patients, to medical professionals, and to the silences around the word “cancer.” Through behavioural research and strategic immersion, we mapped out the core anxieties people faced, both spoken and unspoken.

Key Framing Principles:

  • Design for the asymptomatic: Treat every guest as someone feeling physically fine, but emotionally uncertain.

  • Visibility lowers anxiety: The more you know about what’s coming, the less you fear it. Transparency became a design principle.

  • Personalisation signals care: Small, intentional gestures — robes, touchpoints, report design, detailed consultation — helped transform the sterile into the supportive.

  • Systemic empathy: Every design decision had to align with operational realities. If the system breaks the promise, the brand breaks trust.

We worked across physical, digital, and service layers — using prototypes, journey maps, and implementation workshops to align cross-functional teams around the guest experience.

We worked across physical, digital, and service layers — using prototypes, journey maps, and implementation workshops to align cross-functional teams around the guest experience.

Designing the Solution

As part of NURA’s core design team, I was responsible for translating our service proposition into tangible, human-centered experiences across every guest-facing touchpoint. This meant working across systems, surfaces, and emotional states — ensuring that what we promised on paper came alive in space, screen, and interaction.

The Service Journey
I collaborated closely with service designers, architects, and medical staff to choreograph a guest flow that balanced clinical precision with emotional care. I helped map the end-to-end journey, then detailed each step and touchpoint to ensure that every interaction — from kiosk to robe to doctor consult — felt intentional, calm, and clear.

Crafting the Brand’s Visual World
I led the visual design of NURA — from identity and typography to spatial design — ensuring coherence across media, environment, and systems. The aim was to evoke confidence and comfort without clinical coldness. I created the visual identity system, including colour palette, brand type, and Japanese-inspired graphic motifs, and designed key assets like signage, kiosks, motion displays, and ambient screens.

Owning Communication Across Touchpoints
As custodian of all guest-facing communication and graphics, I ensured tone, clarity, and brand voice across every touchpoint. I designed the health report with grading and visual summaries to improve health literacy and built a comprehensive toolkit — from brochures to screen UI — ready for scale across future centres. This was about maintaining continuity, comfort, and trust at every level.

Impact & Outcomes

NURA’s success is reflected not only in its scale, but in how it’s reshaped preventive healthcare—making screening accessible, approachable, and actionable for tens of thousands of people.

  • Over 77,000 individuals screened across India, Mongolia, and Vietnam

  • 1,500+ critical health risks detected at the Bengaluru center alone

  • Expanded to 10+ centers, with mobile outreach via NURA Express

  • 75% reduction in screening time, delivered through a tightly choreographed 120-minute journey

  • Normalized asymptomatic screening in a traditionally reactive care culture

  • Designed a replicable guest experience system and global operations handbook for scale