One of Hong Kong’s first holistic wellness centres, LifeHub uses innovative IV therapy, aiming to provide optimal health for all. Hive Life sat down with Candice Chan, the Co-founder and CEO of LifeHub about her values, health journey, and the future of holistic wellness in Asia.
Candice Chan, the CEO of LifeHub, co-founded the medical wellness centre in Hong Kong to enhance the way people experience and interact with healthcare. Through studying and combining conventional, innovative, and alternative medicine, LifeHub medical professionals address often neglected underlying health issues.
While many people in the city lack time to focus on restoring their body and health, LifeHub provides an antidote for those with a busy lifestyle to reverse the effects of every day stress on health. As the healthcare industry continues to grow, LifeHub holds strong potential for development and expansion. Raising selfcare awareness among consumers provides a chance for LifeHub and the industry to boom. Combining conventional medicine with innovative technology, LifeHub offers a unique solution within the medical space.
Candice Chan speaks on her success and journey founding her businesses, and gives a sneak peek into what we can expect in the future of wellcare and health.
Can you tell us about LifeHub?
LifeHub is what I call a medical wellness centre. I really like the word wellcare. It’s a word that I’ve been using since we first started, it’s healthcare that focuses on prevention and wellbeing instead of just treating sickness. We focus on health optimisation and disease prevention. Our goal is to make people work smarter, play harder, and live longer. That is our motto for everything we do here.
We provide evidence based products such as supplements and lab tests, and therapies like intravenous therapy. All of these therapies are thoughtfully chosen by our doctors, and the procedures are carried out by medical professionals. In every step and process, we keep it the safest possible that we can.
What inspired you to use IV drip functional medicine to create a wide range of wellness treatments?
Nutrient IV therapy is made of 100% nutrients, meaning they do not contain any drugs. With the modern lifestyle, many people have a compromised gut function, unable to completely absorb all the nutrients from foods. With all the stress, toxins, and unhealthy lifestyle choices, a lot of people are living in this sub-optimal health area, feeling fatigued and bloated. To combat this, we are using IV therapy to increase the baseline potential of their health. This way, people will feel more awake and energised – not just living, but living as their best self.
What challenges did you face when building LifeHub?
There were a lot of challenges, because wellcare is quite new in Hong Kong. When it comes to the majority of the population, local people are hesitant about trying new things, especially if it seems foreign.
So, in the beginning, we had several obstacles and challenges to bring this idea to the local community. Funnily enough, Hong Kong people are quite afraid of therapy procedures involving needles, even though the practice of acupuncture has been around for ages. Compared with countries like Korea and Japan, where they have been using Intravenous therapy for a long time, in Hong Kong, this concept is still new. So introducing IV therapy to a new market was one of the challenges we faced.
Another challenge was the medical regulations in Hong Kong. The regulations in Hong Kong are very strict, and have a list of limitations to abide by. Working within these boundaries, it was difficult to market and brand ourselves freely, and we couldn’t provide as much education to the people as we would like to have. This was probably a very big challenge we came across. It took a while for the word-of-mouth to build up, as people gradually began learning and hearing about the benefits provided by LifeHub.
How did you overcome these limitations to marketing LifeHub’s brand in Hong Kong?
We did a lot of education series and seminars about functional medicine to really communicate to our audience. At these events, we focused on educating people about the importance of gut health and detoxification, aging, or cancer prevention. In turn, people get a peek into the purpose of LifeHub and get increased knowledge about IV therapy treatment.
What is your advice for those who are new to IV therapy, but are considering trying it?
When starting IV therapy, there is no rush. I understand that some people are not keen on treatments involving needles. Personally, before I tried IV therapy, I wasn’t a believer of this procedure as well. For such people, we can start by supplementation.
Personalised supplementation is one of LifeHub’s services, in which we conduct consultations through lab tests that we provide. These lab tests are done to assess each and every person’s current health. This assesses gut health, energy, metabolism, and dietary nutritions. Professionals then address whatever issue with accurate and effective supplementation and treatments.
Once you start with supplements and experience a noticeable change in your health and body, we would then offer to introduce IV therapy to enhance the effects of our treatments. So, a more step-by-step process is what LifeHub opts for everyone who is new to holistic wellness routines.
How do you see the future of innovative wellness products in Hong Kong evolving?
I definitely think that people here are getting progressively more health conscious, and aware of underlying health problems that could lead to sicknesses like cancer. Not only in Hong Kong, but overseas, the practice of IV therapy is becoming more and more popular as people feel its effectiveness.
With the pandemic keeping people at home, self care has boomed. How has this impacted LifeHub?
Yes, it definitely impacted LifeHub. During the outbreak seasons, we saw spikes in the frequency of customer visits. Every time there was an outbreak in the city, we saw a correlating spike. People turned to our services for IV Drips, and supplements to boost their immune system. During these times, many people seek Vitamin C IV Drips, because Vitamin C was actually used as a [treatment] protocol for Covid patients in hospitals.
I do think that people’s awareness on preventive health is certainly increasing after the pandemic, and more are talking about health. Before, it was always about “how can we use and run our bodies more?” With all these temptations in our lives on a daily basis, it is good to see people caring for themselves more.
What can we look forward to from LifeHub?
We are working to launch our own product line. Currently, we have LifeHub’s supplements, with a supplement line launching some time in November. We also plan to have a collaboration partner in Tsim Sha Tsui, where they will be carrying IV services provided by us, in their stores.
We are also launching our mini-app for China, and opening new locations in China. The mini-app is not only for the Chinese market, as long as you have access to WeChat, anybody can use it. It serves as a platform to connect users with health coaches, nutritionists and our doctors, with focus on functional medicine. All the in-person lab tests we conduct for our customers will be available through the app, whether it be diagnosis on health issues, or personalised solutions. People can also make bookings for therapy sessions in our locations or those of our collaborative partners.
LifeHub is a community partner of the Hive, and members are able to enjoy 25% off their first visit on IV drips, and 10% off all services and products thereafter.
Featured banner image: thelifehub.com
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