HS Living Truths x The Invisible Bags Experience - Incyte

Remember when What's In My Bag? was practically a genre of its own on social media? Everyone from celebrities to influencers was emptying their bags for the internet, giving us a peek into their lives through the things they carried. I wanted to borrow that cultural obsession and turn it into something a little more meaningful.

When I started digging into the patient-burden research on Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS), I found something that clinical photographs and lesion counts couldn't quite capture. One survey of 537 patients revealed how profoundly HS affected work and clothing choices. Other research documented the exhausting logistics of living with the disease: managing wound drainage, changing dressings, dealing with odour, and constantly planning for the next unpredictable flare.

And here's what struck me. For many HS patients, leaving the house isn't just getting ready. It's preparing for what could go wrong.

Spare clothes in case a wound leaks. Gauze and dressings for an unexpected flare. Pain relief. An entire contingency plan for a disease that rarely gives advance notice.

So I thought, what if we gave the internet's favourite What's In My Bag? trend a very different kind of reveal?

That became my idea for The Invisible Bags Experience, an immersive activation I conceived for Incyte at the Symposium on Hidradenitis Suppurativa Advances (SHSA). We invited healthcare professionals to look inside the bags of people living with HS, revealing not just what they carry physically, but the psychological and social burden that rarely makes it into a consultation.

We took a familiar piece of pop culture, grounded it in patient-burden research, and turned it into an unexpected way to build clinical empathy.

Because sometimes, the most revealing part of a patient's medical history isn't in their chart. It's in what they have to carry just to get through an ordinary day.