The focus of this paper is on living labs for health innovation. Health care (cure) systems are under pressure as a consequence of the ageing population and fast increasing population with chronic conditions, in a situation of decreasing financial budgets. At the same time, the valorization of health inventions is stumbled by many blocks. Living labs as an innovation tool, whether conceived as delimited environments for co-creation and development or as local/regional platforms, may offer various solutions. The paper identifies factors that hamper the valorization of knowledge in general and it identifies critical factors in the application of medical living labs, using the literature and five case studies.@en

This chapter studies living labs as a methodology of user-centric innovation. The focus is on sustainability in healthcare and increasing efficiency, affordability and inclusiveness. The real-life environments are residential homes for elderly people, hospitals and a shopping mall, the latter as an example of increasing accessibility for wheelchairs. The chapter aims to identify critical factors in the performance of living labs, drawing on literature and in-depth case studies in Eindhoven and Maastricht (Netherlands), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Montreal (Canada). Important critical factors are: early involvement of users, including feedback from them, and sufficient involvement of a wider network of stakeholders with the required expertise/input. An appropriate selection of promising inventions is also important. A preliminary analysis of network building through living labs found a trend for both local and global networking, with an emphasis on the latter. These findings touch on a leadership challenge for local governments, namely as a ‘connector’ between different local/ regional organizations.@en