Abstract

Health and wellness technology is a growing industry. It has been recognised importance to support health technology companies through new procedures. Collaboration between healthcare professionals and companies facilitates the development of customer-centric and patient-safe products and services.

In Finland the City of Kuopio and Kuopio University Hospital (KUH) launched Living Lab to enable companies to develop products and services in an authentic healthcare environment to facilitate development of new innovations. Living Lab is a project funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Regional Council of Northern Savo. The project started in spring 2016 and runs until June 2018. The aim is to enable continuation of Living Lab as a permanent service.

Living Lab has two operating platforms. The City of Kuopio platform provides companies with the opportunity to develop and test solutions that are suitable for primary health care. The KUH platform concerns specialised medical care and provides innovation development, testing and clinical research for devices and applications.

The patient safety aspect is present throughout all phases of Living Lab processes. Every product is evaluated by professionals before testing. The intention is to identify all possible risks to patient safety and information security in order to support the research and development (R and D) process and ensure that a product or solution meets all safety regulations and requirements (including usability).

During test runs and clinical trials, the usability of a product or solution, its realisation and the experimental effects are evaluated and reported. Companies can use the test results to further develop their innovations so that they will eventually offer a patient-safe product on the market.

Companies have shown growing interest in the capabilities of authentic testing platforms with healthcare professionals and patients. Living Lab may lead to an increase in the volume and quality of new patient-safe health technology.