Vaccines Reimagined: Accelerated Innovation Workshop

September 1, 2026 at Bern, Switzerland

What if the future of vaccination starts not with the vaccine, but with the life people want to live?

People do not want vaccines. They want what vaccines can help make possible.

They want to travel further without worrying about what might go wrong. They want to protect their children, parents and partners. They want to keep working, exploring and living. They want confidence rather than anxiety, freedom rather than restriction, and prevention rather than treatment. The vaccine is rarely the aspiration. It is an enabler of the aspiration.

That distinction matters because the world of vaccination is entering a period of remarkable innovation. Science is changing what vaccines can address, technology is changing how they can be developed and delivered, and consumers are changing how they think about their own health. Yet much of the way vaccination is presented to people still follows a relatively traditional healthcare model: identify a risk, explain the disease, recommend an intervention and encourage compliance.

The bigger opportunity is to flip the perspective.

Instead of asking how we can persuade more people to take vaccines, ask a different question: how could vaccination become a more natural, relevant and valuable part of the lives people want to lead?

That question opens a much bigger innovation space.

From vaccines to protection platforms

The first shift is already happening inside the science.

Moderna demonstrated the potential of mRNA not simply as the basis of a single vaccine, but as a programmable technology platform. The significance of its Covid-19 vaccine extended beyond one product: it helped make visible a model in which biological instructions can potentially be designed and adapted much faster than traditional development approaches.

The strategic lesson is bigger than mRNA. It is the shift from product thinking to platform thinking.

What if a vaccine company thought less like a portfolio of individual products and more like a life-protection platform — connecting science, data, prevention, access and ongoing relationships with people?

Innovation is also changing the physical experience of vaccination. CanSino developed an inhaled Covid vaccine, challenging the assumption that vaccination necessarily requires an injection. Vaxxas has been developing high-density microarray patches designed to deliver vaccines through the skin. Other researchers are exploring nasal and oral approaches.

Each innovation challenges something that previously seemed fixed.

A vaccine requires a needle. A healthcare professional has to administer it. Vaccination happens in a clinic or pharmacy. Products require particular storage and distribution infrastructures. Consumers have to go somewhere specifically to receive them.

Once those assumptions start disappearing, entirely different experiences become imaginable.

And distribution itself can be reinvented. Zipline’s drone logistics networks demonstrate how healthcare products, including vaccines and other medical supplies, can reach communities in ways conventional infrastructure struggles to achieve. The innovation is not the medicine. It is the last mile around the medicine.

This suggests a useful principle for innovation: sometimes the greatest opportunity is not changing the product at all. It is changing everything around it.

The rise of the healthy health consumer

An equally important transformation is happening on the consumer side.

Healthcare historically had an unusual relationship with its customers. People generally entered the system because something was wrong. Healthcare was episodic, expert-led and reactive.

Increasingly, consumers are engaging with health while they are healthy.

They monitor sleep with Oura, exercise with Strava, heart rhythms with Apple Watch, glucose through emerging metabolic-health platforms and increasingly broad sets of biomarkers through preventative health and diagnostic services. They use apps for nutrition, mindfulness, fertility, fitness and longevity. They expect personalisation, immediacy and intelligibility.

Apple has been particularly important in normalising this shift. Apple Watch did not position health monitoring as something exclusively for sick people. Activity rings, heart-rate tracking, sleep insights and other health features made aspects of personal health part of everyday behaviour.

That creates a profound question for vaccination.

Why should prevention remain episodic when health is becoming continuous?

Imagine vaccination not as an isolated transaction but as one component of a personal protection system: understanding where you are going, what you are doing, your relevant health circumstances and what actions might help you prepare.

The individual moves from being the passive recipient of healthcare to becoming an active participant in their own health.

For voluntary vaccines, this shift is particularly significant because there is no simple compliance model. People make choices. And choices are shaped by far more than clinical information.

Nobody wakes up wanting a travel vaccine

Travel health illustrates the challenge perfectly.

Someone booking a trip to Thailand is probably thinking about beaches, hotels, food, weather and what they will experience. Someone planning to climb Kilimanjaro is thinking about fitness, equipment and reaching the summit. Parents taking their children on a long-awaited trip may be thinking about whether everybody will enjoy it and whether they have remembered everything.

Very few begin with: Which vaccines should I consider?

Travel health sits inside a much larger emotional journey.

This means that the traditional framing of vaccination around disease and risk may capture only part of the motivation. Other behavioural drivers can be equally powerful: peace of mind, protecting a family holiday, avoiding disruption, preserving freedom, feeling prepared, being a responsible parent or partner, and even reinforcing an identity.

There is a subtle but potentially powerful distinction between being a tourist and being a traveller.

The experienced traveller prepares. They understand the destination. They respect local conditions. They have insurance, the right equipment, appropriate documentation and contingency plans. Preparation becomes part of their identity.

Could appropriate preventative health become part of that identity too?

The proposition then begins to shift from protect yourself from disease towards be ready for the experience.

This does not mean trivialising medical risks or making inappropriate claims. Healthcare communications need to remain evidence-based and compliant. But compliance need not prevent understanding human motivation. Indeed, better understanding should enable more responsible communication because information can appear at moments when it is genuinely useful.

From health communication to behavioural design

This leads to another important shift.

Most organisations think about communications in terms of what should we say?

Consumer innovators increasingly ask when, where, from whom and in what context will somebody encounter the idea?

Those questions matter because behaviour is contextual.

A generic message about travel vaccination received six months before someone considers travelling may have little relevance. The same information when someone has just booked a £7,000 family holiday can feel entirely different.

Imagine the travel journey.

Dream → Search → Book → Plan → Prepare → Depart → Experience → Return → Dream again.

Every stage has different emotions, behaviours and influencers.

At dreaming, people seek inspiration. At booking, the trip suddenly becomes real. During planning, they research destinations. During preparation, they make checklists and buy what they need. Close to departure, urgency rises sharply.

What if preventative health were intelligently integrated into those moments rather than waiting for the consumer to discover it?

The opportunity could extend across airlines, travel platforms, insurers, employers, universities, pharmacies, adventure-travel companies, tour operators and destination services.

Instead of expecting consumers to enter the vaccine ecosystem, bring appropriate preventative-health information into the ecosystems consumers already inhabit.

Learn from L’Oréal: personalise the proposition

Some of the most useful inspiration may come from companies that have nothing to do with vaccines.

Consider L’Oréal.

Beauty was once largely a product business: manufacture cosmetics, build brands, distribute them and advertise their benefits. L’Oréal increasingly describes itself as a beauty-tech company, using AI, diagnostics, digital experiences and personalisation to connect products more closely with individual consumers.

The important principle is personalisation before proposition.

Apply that to travel health.

Instead of starting with “here is our vaccine”, imagine beginning with: Where are you travelling? When? For how long? What will you be doing? Who are you travelling with? What preparation might be relevant?

The resulting experience becomes my journey, my circumstances, my preparation.

Not personalised medicine without appropriate clinical oversight, but personalised relevance.

Learn from Oatly: change the cultural meaning

Oatly provides a very different lesson.

It did not build its distinctiveness by explaining oat chemistry better than everyone else. It changed the cultural meaning of the category. Packaging, language, humour, environmental positioning and identity helped turn a relatively mundane milk alternative into something consumers could identify with.

Vaccination clearly cannot simply borrow irreverent consumer marketing approaches; the regulatory and ethical context is fundamentally different.

But the underlying question is useful:

What cultural meaning does vaccination carry?

Is it an unpleasant medical necessity? Something imposed by authority? Something anxious people do? Or could prevention signify preparedness, responsibility, confidence and freedom?

Brands do not merely communicate functional benefits. At their best, they help people express who they are.

Could being well prepared for travel become part of the identity of the modern global traveller?

Learn from Peloton: turn transactions into relationships

Peloton’s most interesting innovation was not an exercise bike. Exercise bikes existed for decades.

It connected hardware, software, instructors, content, data and community into an ongoing experience. A transaction became a relationship.

Vaccination is typically episodic. Receive the intervention and the relationship largely ends.

But travel is not episodic for many people. They travel repeatedly throughout their lives.

Imagine a Traveller Health Passport — not necessarily a literal new medical record, but an experience that helps people understand their vaccination history, preparation needs and relevant health considerations as their journeys evolve.

The relationship shifts from:

“Do you need this vaccine?”

to:

“Where are you going next?”

That is a fundamentally different consumer relationship.

Learn from Rappi: make protection easier

Another lesson comes from the convenience economy.

Rappi, Grab, DoorDash and other platform businesses have taught consumers to expect services to come to them. Amazon conditioned people to expect almost frictionless fulfilment. Zipline demonstrates how radically logistics can be redesigned even for healthcare.

Healthcare cannot always offer consumer-platform levels of immediacy. Nor should convenience override clinical appropriateness.

But it can ask a revealing question:

How much preventative behaviour is lost simply because it is inconvenient?

Finding information, understanding recommendations, identifying a provider, booking an appointment, travelling there and returning for subsequent requirements all create friction.

Each individual step may appear trivial. Collectively, they can kill intent.

Innovation therefore means examining the entire friction architecture around vaccination.

Could information be simpler? Could appointments connect more naturally to trip planning? Could pharmacies, employers or travel partners expand appropriate access? Could digital tools make the journey easier to navigate?

The best experience may not persuade harder. It may simply make doing the right thing easier.

Learn from Apple: build an ecosystem

Perhaps the biggest stretch comes from Apple.

Apple’s power comes not from any single product but from an ecosystem in which devices, software, data and services reinforce one another. Health increasingly sits within that ecosystem.

Vaccination companies have traditionally operated primarily within healthcare ecosystems: clinicians, public-health authorities, pharmacies, distributors and payers.

Travel health suggests a much broader potential ecosystem.

Airlines know where people are going. Travel platforms know when. Insurers understand travel risks. Pharmacies provide accessible healthcare. Employers know about business travel. Universities know about international students. Adventure companies understand activities. Digital platforms understand behavioural moments.

The future opportunity may therefore lie less in controlling the consumer relationship than in orchestrating an ecosystem around the consumer’s journey.

The vaccine company becomes one participant in a broader prevention network.

From vaccine brands to protection propositions

Put these inspirations together and a very different innovation agenda emerges.

Imagine Travel Ready: a personalised preparation experience connecting destination, timing, activities and appropriate health information.

Imagine Protect the Adventure: prevention framed around safeguarding an experience somebody has invested money, time and emotion in creating.

Imagine Family Ready: helping families navigate travel-health preparation together rather than as disconnected individuals.

Imagine The Protected Traveller: building positive social norms around knowledgeable, prepared and responsible travelling.

Imagine appropriate Protection Moments, where useful preventative-health information appears naturally at relevant stages of booking and preparation.

And imagine a broader Life Protection Platform, where vaccination is one part of an ongoing relationship around prevention rather than a sequence of disconnected products.

Some of these ideas will prove commercially difficult. Others will encounter regulatory, privacy, partnership or technology barriers. Some may simply be wrong.

That is precisely why they are useful provocations.

Innovation starts by expanding what we imagine before narrowing down what we can execute.

The next vaccine innovation may not be a vaccine

This may be the most important idea for the Vaccines Accelerator.

There are at least three horizons of innovation.

The first is reinventing engagement: propositions, language, behavioural triggers, trusted influencers, channels and experiences.

The second is reinventing access: partnerships, digital journeys, pharmacy models, travel ecosystems, new delivery mechanisms and radically reduced friction.

The third is reinventing prevention itself: new vaccine technologies, new administration formats, personalised protection, integrated health platforms and new relationships between consumers and preventative medicine.

Scientific innovation remains fundamental. Better vaccines matter enormously.

But the next breakthrough in vaccination may also come from something surrounding the vaccine: a different consumer proposition, an unexpected partnership, a better moment of engagement, a new delivery experience or a business model borrowed from somewhere nobody in the industry thought to look.

That is why looking beyond healthcare matters.

Steal L’Oréal’s personalisation. Oatly’s cultural reframing. Peloton’s relationships. Rappi’s convenience. Apple’s ecosystem thinking. Zipline’s reinvention of access. Combine them with the extraordinary innovation happening within vaccines themselves.

Then turn the telescope around.

Don’t begin with the vaccine and ask how to find consumers for it.

Begin with people. Understand their lives, ambitions, identities, anxieties, journeys and behaviours. Then ask where prevention can create genuine value within them.

For Bavarian Nordic, that creates a much more ambitious innovation question than how do we market vaccines differently?

It becomes: