Victoria Betton, author of Towards a Digital Health Ecology: NHS Digital Adoption through the COVID-19 Looking Glass, discusses whether Living Labs are the answer to powering open innovation in Integrated Care Systems.
My early days in digital health were fuelled by a curiosity for innovation — the introduction of the novel and the new. However, I have since been pulled inexorably towards the basics, the fundamentals and the foundations.
What I have learnt (the hard way) is that novelty sits shakily when it rests on unstable foundations. The digital roots of the NHS are anything but secure. Whether it be hardware, software, connectivity or interoperability — these fundamentals are not yet sufficiently embedded to consistently power new insights and new possibilities.
Most of what I now find myself doing is helping NHS organisations optimise those digital foundations. But as regional collaboration in the shape of Integrated Care Systems find their feet, I wonder if it is possible to create space(s) to explore the novel at a regional scale.
I’ve been thinking about this question whilst working with the new cross-sector INCLUDE+ network exploring how social and digital environments can be built, shaped and sustained to enable all people to thrive. My small piece of the jigsaw puzzle is to support the team in developing a Living Lab — an open innovation ecosystem for co-creation, rapid prototyping, testing and scaling-up innovation.
I wonder what can the NHS learn from this approach? Is it possible to create exploratory spaces and sets of practices to galvanise experimentation, whilst the vital foundations are being secured?
It may seem frivolous when everything is on fire, but maybe we can’t afford to not explore novel futures when what has served us to date doesn’t quite meet our contemporary reality.
Living Labs are vehicles to nurture and facilitate [digital] innovation with light governance:
- User research to test hypotheses and understand needs
- Prototyping [often using data]
- Usability and interaction testing with end users
- Simulated environments (e.g. clinic consultation room)
- Real world testing in [health and care] settings
- Brings citizens, industry, practitioners & academics together.
The European Network of Living Labs provides accreditation for organisations developing open innovation.
There are amazing examples of Living Labs across the UK, Europe and more widely. I am a massive fan of Lab4Living at Sheffield Hallam University, there is the Brighton and Hove Digital Health Living Lab and The Bristol Approach to name a few. They bring the unusual suspects together to learn, solve problems and co-create together.
Integrated Care Systems are founded on collaboration between sectors in regions to plan services and improve the lives of people who live and work in their area. Could Living Labs hold promise as a way to facilitate citizen-focused participation in innovation? Can they be a vehicle to bring the unusual subjects together — community groups, philosophers, ethicists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, designers — breaking us out of the limits of how we each see things from our particular vantage point. Where is the energy? Who is already doing this? And who is up for a conversation?
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P.S. please check out this fantastic blog post from INCLUDE+ research fellow Georgia Brennan-Scott on asset based community development as an approach for citizen-led innovation.