How to Apply Behavioural Science for Better Results in Healthcare
At Capuchin, our behavioural science approach has helped drive a 36% increase in sales, worth $46m, for one brand in the health space, doubled conversion for a health brand with a premium-priced offering, and delivered a 4.5× increase in downloads for an app.
The psychology of healthcare
Two people have the same condition. One wants to understand everything about it. The other would rather think about almost anything else.
The same message could reassure one and overwhelm the other.
In healthcare, knowing someone’s symptoms tells you only part of the story. Their motivations, fears and beliefs shape how they respond to your product, your advice and your brand.
And the professionals advising them have their own psychology, too.
All of us have limited time and attention. We rely on mental shortcuts called heuristics to help us make decisions. Familiarity, trust, perceived effort and how information is presented can influence what we notice, believe and do.
That creates commercial opportunities throughout healthcare. Finding overlooked audiences. Making the value of a product clearer. Helping people take the next step and keep going.
Here are three examples of how behavioural science can help:
🧠 Cognitive load. More information can make a decision harder. A clearer visual aid, a better organised product page or one obvious next step can help people understand their options and act.
⏰ Present bias. The effort of doing something today can feel more immediate than a future benefit. Showing how a service fits into daily life can make its value easier to appreciate now.
🙋 Personal relevance. People with the same condition may want very different things: control, reassurance, independence or simply less disruption. Understanding those motivations helps you frame the same offer in more meaningful ways.
How does it work?
We’ve helped organisations tackle a wide range of healthcare challenges.
From revealing the psychology behind seeking treatment for plantar fasciitis to developing scientifically grounded recommendations for communicating treatment benefits, from IBS to life-changing conditions. From consumer health products to pharmaceutical communications and wellbeing apps.
Whether you reach people directly, through healthcare professionals, or through employers and advisers.
Whether the goal is finding new sources of growth, strengthening your proposition, improving conversion or encouraging continued engagement.
We combine psychology and data to reveal what drives your audience, then show you how to apply it.
Example 1: Reveal new opportunities
Who has the greatest potential to choose your product or service? What would make it relevant to them? And what might be holding them back?
We reveal the psychological traits, motivations and barriers that distinguish your audiences. Then we size and prioritise the commercial opportunities and show you how to address them through targeting, positioning, propositions and communications.
In healthcare, that means looking beyond age, symptoms or diagnosis to understand what people want from managing their health, and the role your offering could play.
For one brand in the health space, we uncovered the underlying psychology of its audiences, identified key opportunities and showed how to address each differently. Our work helped drive a 36% increase in sales, worth $46m.
Example 1 - Reveal new opportunities
Who has the greatest potential to choose your product or service? What would make it relevant to them? And what might be holding them back?
We reveal the psychological traits, motivations and barriers that distinguish your audiences. Then we size and prioritise the commercial opportunities and show you precisely how to address each one. From the benefits to emphasise and the reassurance to offer, to the specific words, images, colours and design cues most likely to resonate with their psychology and encourage action.
In healthcare, that means looking beyond age, symptoms or diagnosis to understand what people want from managing their health, and the role your offering could play.
For one brand in the health space, we uncovered the underlying psychology of its audiences, identified key opportunities and showed how to address each differently. Our work helped drive a 36% increase in sales, worth $46m.
Example 2 - Be more persuasive
You know the benefits of your offering. How do you make those benefits matter to the people choosing, recommending or using it?
We use techniques such as psychodynamic interviews and implicit testing to uncover how your audiences consider decisions. Then we translate that understanding into practical guidance for propositions, messaging, imagery and sales conversations.
We’ve applied this approach to medical communications across conditions ranging from IBS to serious illness, exploring both the language used and the interaction between patients and healthcare professionals.
We applied price psychology for a health brand with a premium-priced offering in an extremely competitive market. Our scientific recommendations on how prices were quoted, product presentation, communications and sales conversations doubled their conversion rate.
Example 3 - Shift behaviour
Understanding the value of something doesn’t guarantee people will use it.
We identify the motivations and barriers at crucial moments in the journey, then develop practical behavioural nudges to help people take the next step.
From noticing a service to signing up. From first use to continued engagement. Across websites, product pages, apps, communications and personal interactions.
We’ve applied behavioural science to optimise healthcare apps and encourage engagement with health services through advisers and employers. For another app, our behavioural recommendations delivered a 4.5× increase in downloads.
You get specific recommendations for what to change, why it should help and how to test it.
Ready to Nudge?
Wherever there’s behaviour to change, we can help.
Share your challenge, and we’ll show you an agile, effective way you can start applying behavioural science.
Talk to us today about how you can start scientifically improving results.
Still more questions? Just ask.