Mace & Menter has evolved and we are now Healthia® - the service co-design and digital innovation consultancy for health, care and public services.

Our domain name has changed to healthia.services, reflecting our focus on improving services as well as our deep experience across health and care.

Why are we changing?

We founded Mace & Menter in 2013 because we knew a user centred approach would have a dramatic impact on the organisations we worked with. A lot has changed since then but that goal is as strong as ever.

In 2013, UX and user research were fairly novel disciplines and the nascent Government Digital Service was just finding its feet. Fast forward to 2024 and user centred design is well established - it even has its own government jobs family.

As the market has matured, it made sense for us to take stock and identify where we are strongest as a company and where we can add most value to our clients. What makes us different as a consultancy and why do people choose to hire us?

This process started with interviewing clients, looking back at our best work and our client base and working with the team here to determine what are the problems we solve best, prototyping new propositions and testing positioning.

So where have we got to?

Solving the many challenges faced by our health system requires strong collaboration and an innovative approach. Our skills, experience, research and design-led approach place us in a unique position to help.

So we continue to focus on health and care across public, third sector and commercial organisations.

Typically, organisations choose to work with us when:

• they are starting a transformation project,
• need to improve a service or launch new services,
• are unsure about where to invest for impact,
• and lack structured evidence around what people need.

We then work to:

• uncover unmet needs,
• co-design change,
• prototype opportunities for innovation,
• build capability across an organisation,
• build watertight cases for investment.

We achieve these outcomes:

• clarity and vision for needs-based transformation,
• confidence around where and how to invest,
• better experiences for the people involved.

We embed deep expertise around ways digital can be harnessed to meet those needs and there is usually a user experience component to our work but not always.

Strategic research and service design

So we add most value when we work as a strategic research and service design partner early on in a transformation process. We enable our clients to make decisions based on evidence not guesswork, which builds a solid foundation for change.

For example, we helped the NHS identify and prototype ways to improve people’s experience of the autism diagnosis pathway before any implementation of technology and we’re working with Breast Cancer Now and Macmillan to identify ways to improve delivery of services before investment in new systems (Claire Reynolds will share more about our work with Macmillan at Digital Leaders).

Collaborative working

As our projects have grown in scale over the years, the collaborative aspect of our work has become increasingly important. Projects can involve multiple teams and organisations. Those people feed into the design through facilitated workshops and structured research, so we talk about service co-design.

For example, when we worked with Mid and South Essex ICS to co-design the service model for a new health and wellness centre — prior to submission of a business case for its construction — we collaborated with residents, GPs, community groups, NHS staff and representatives from the local authority.

Inclusive research

Through our extensive work across the NHS and public health we have developed a specialism in inclusive user research. We do what it takes to reach the right people so that their needs can be accommodated. We’ve run research with homeless adults, people with low digital skills, children and young people seeking mental health support, disabled job seekers and people not in education, employment or training.

Partnering with technologists

We made an early decision not to become a technology firm on the basis that not all problems can be solved with technology. Partnering with the right technologists in the right context is a stronger proposition for our clients and allows us more space to work as strategic partners.

So we now have a tried and tested partnership model. We often work in blended agile teams alongside client staff and technology delivery teams. 

Skills and capability building

Building capability inside the organisations we work for is often part of our work. Our goal is to leave the team in a position to continue working in a human centred way long beyond our engagement. 

We do this through paired working and blended teams. Learning through doing. But we also run more formal training where required. For example we’re currently doing this with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, leading the user-centred redesign of LUCI, a population health management tool for mental health teams.

As part of our relaunch we have created a series of service design training modules specifically designed for people working in health and care: Introduction to service design, Listening skills, Facilitation, Sketching and Mapping. We’ve also reprinted our Discovery Mindset Cards, designed to help people working in a user centred way.

People

This renewed focus has allowed us to be clear about the team we need to deliver against these objectives. 

• Gareth Fryer joins us as Consulting Director, bringing 17 years experience across health and digital, most recently as founder and Co-CEO of Fika an organisation working to develop mental fitness. 
• Consulting Director Claire Reynolds leads our work across third sector following 15 years experience in organisations including Alzheimer’s Society, Parkinson’s UK and Nuffield Trust. 
• Experience Design Director, Andrew Grimes continues to lead our service design and research engagements and training offer building on his experience of work across NHSE Transformation Directorate, NHS ICSs and multiple digital-first organisations. 

How we can help

Challenges we help our health and care clients solve include gathering evidence for change and designing people-first products and services.

For public services we also run bespoke discoveries and alphas.

Get involved

As part of this change we are launching:

• Problems Worth Solving - a podcast focusing on user centred service design in health and care where we will be talking to people who have had impact through taking a user centred approach. Sign up below or get in touch if there’s someone you would like to hear from.
• Online webinars and roundtables focusing on design-led health and care

Keep on keeping on

Change is constant and as the World continues to evolve, we will too. As a team we are excited by this direction and the opportunity that through our work we can continue to work on problems worth solving and help you deliver Healthia services.