Aga Khan University
Communications, Brand
& Experience Audit
An outside-in assessment of how one of the developing world's most important institutions presents itself across six countries, thirteen stakeholder groups, and more than fifty digital touchpoints.
The institution outperforms
its own story
Aga Khan University accounts for 75% of all biomedical research produced in Pakistan. It operates internationally accredited hospitals on two continents, serves over two million patients each year, and is backed by one of the most respected development networks in the world. But the way it communicates, the way its digital surfaces look and feel, and the way its various entities present themselves to the world have not kept pace with the substance of what happens inside.
A complete map of AKU's digital and physical footprint
The full scope of AKU's brand surface is broader than most people inside the institution are likely aware of. Across websites, portals, mobile apps, social channels, merchandise, and physical campuses, the brand touches millions of people through dozens of independently managed properties.
Digital
Physical & Clinical
Thirteen groups, thirteen different experiences of the brand
AKU serves an unusually diverse range of stakeholders, from patients in rural Gilgit-Baltistan to research partners at leading universities in the United States and Europe. Each group encounters the institution through different channels, and each carries away a different impression. No single communications function currently owns the full picture.
Internal Stakeholders
External Stakeholders
Brand is not what you say.
It is what people experience.
For an institution like AKU, the most powerful brand impressions are formed not through marketing materials but through lived experience. How a patient accesses their lab results, how a student navigates the admissions process, how a clinician moves between systems during a shift. The quality of these interactions either reinforces or undermines the institution's reputation, and right now there is a significant gap between the clinical excellence AKU delivers and the digital experience that surrounds it.
A patient who receives world-class clinical care but cannot access their lab results on a crashing app carries away a contradictory impression. A prospective student who hears about AKU's research excellence but lands on a SharePoint website with a COVID-era banner questions whether the institution is as forward-looking as its reputation suggests. Experience design is not separate from brand. It is the brand.
30+ accounts, no shared playbook
AKU's social media hub page lists over thirty separate accounts across twenty entities, spanning Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok. Each was created independently to serve a specific unit's needs. The result is a fragmented landscape where the hospital brand in Pakistan commands a far larger audience than the university itself, and an unofficial account (@agakhanuniversity on Instagram, with 4,100 followers) uses the institution's name without AKU's control.
Instagram Followers
Facebook Followers
The hospital brand in Pakistan commands a consumer audience nearly four times the size of the university brand on Instagram. On Facebook, AKUH Pakistan is the single largest property at 369,000 followers. This is not a problem to solve. It is an asset to build on. Clinical trust is where the real brand equity lives, and the CMCO's task is to connect the university narrative to that trust rather than trying to subordinate it.
15+ apps, three developer accounts, no unified experience
AKU publishes mobile applications under at least three separate developer accounts on the App Store and Google Play: "Aga Khan University Hospital," "Aga Khan University," and "Islamic Publications Limited." There is no shared design language, no consistent branding, and the patient-facing applications carry notably poor user ratings with complaints about crashes, unreadable fonts, and missing functionality.
| App | Function | Developer | Rating | Key Issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family Hifazat | Patient Portal (PK) | AKUH | Users report poor colour contrast, tiny fonts, crashes | |
| AKUH Patient Care | Patient App (PK) | AKUH | Crashes on launch, reports inaccessible, users unable to login | |
| MyPatients@aku | Clinician Portal | AKUH | Crashes intermittently, data missing compared to desktop | |
| Hayat | Maternal Health | dHRC / AKU | Award-winning but lives in separate AKDN ecosystem | |
| AKU 40th Anniv. | Event App | Islamic Pub. Ltd | Different developer entirely, single-use, still live in 2026 | |
| Corona-Check | COVID Screening | AKUH | Completely obsolete, still published on app stores | |
| AkuEb | Exam Board | AKU | Separate brand identity from the university |
The contrast between the Hayat app, which won the Commonwealth Digital Health Award in 2022 and a silver medal at the International Digital Health Awards in 2023, and the patient-facing apps that carry 1.7-star ratings, illustrates the inconsistency across AKU's digital products. The institution clearly has the capability to build excellent digital health tools. The challenge is that this capability is not being applied consistently across the portfolio, and the apps that the largest number of people actually use every day are the ones that perform worst.
Three design systems,
one institution
AKU's three primary digital properties each use a completely different visual language. A visitor moving between them would not recognise a single institutional identity. There is no shared colour palette, no common typography, no unified design system, and no published brand guidelines.
Platform: Microsoft SharePoint, design era approximately 2015
Platform: Next.js, design era 2024, modern and responsive
Platform: Custom CMS, consumer-facing healthcare brand
- The AKU seal incorporates a 49-pointed star representing the 49th Imam and a Quranic Ayat in thuluth script. It is rich in meaning but complex for digital reproduction at small sizes, and there is no visible simplified mark or wordmark system for digital contexts.
- The AKU Leopard mascot was recently introduced for student life and merchandise, but how the seal, any wordmark, and the mascot relate to each other architecturally is not defined.
- The university, each hospital, and the exam board each use distinct logo treatments with no visible lockup system or co-branding rules.
- The WearAKU merchandise store at wearaku.store is linked from the main aku.edu navigation but contains Lorem Ipsum placeholder text on product pages, and the domain wearaku.com redirects to X (Twitter) rather than the store.
Five positioning statements,
five touchpoints
Across its major digital properties, AKU uses several different positioning statements that do not cohere into a single brand narrative. Each is individually reasonable. Collectively, they tell disconnected stories to different audiences.
Johns Hopkins solved this problem
Johns Hopkins faces a structurally similar challenge to AKU: a world-class university and a world-class hospital system that need to present a coherent brand without subordinating either. Their solution is instructive. A unified primary brand, a single published style guide, clear architecture from university to division to unit, and an explicit rule that the university and medicine logos may never appear together.
A phased transformation roadmap
The following roadmap outlines how a CMCO might approach the transformation of AKU's communications, brand, and experience architecture across three phases. The sequencing reflects the principle that governance and strategy must precede infrastructure investment, which must in turn precede scaled execution.
Summary
AKU's communications challenge is not a deficit of substance. It is an abundance of substance without a unifying frame. The institution has world-class research output, internationally accredited hospitals, a growing multi-country footprint, and the backing of one of the world's most respected development networks. The opportunity for the CMCO is to build a global institutional communications and experience function from a position of strength, unifying brand, digital, and experience across six countries and thirteen stakeholder groups.