LJMU Living Lab: Connecting Research, Innovation and Real-World Impact
Did you know that LJMU hosts one of only five Living Labs in the UK accredited by the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), and the only accredited Living Lab in the North West of England?
The LJMU Living Lab provides a platform for researchers, businesses, public sector organisations, communities and citizens to work together to explore challenges, co-design solutions and test innovations in real-world settings.
Unlike traditional research environments, Living Labs enable ideas, products, services and interventions to be developed and evaluated alongside the people who will ultimately use them. This helps generate evidence more quickly, improve adoption and implementation, and ensure that innovation addresses genuine needs.
Living Lab projects at LJMU
The Living Lab approach has already been applied across a range of areas at LJMU, including:
Dementia innovation and service design, supporting the co-creation and evaluation of services with people living with dementia and their carers, including work that informed the development and evaluation of a Dementia Reablement Service.
Healthcare innovation, bringing together academic teams, clinicians and service users to test and refine new approaches to care delivery and service improvement.
Applied digital innovation, exploring how digital tools can be developed and tested with end users in practice settings to understand usability, value and implementation challenges.
Community initiatives, working with local stakeholders to develop place-based solutions to complex social challenges.
Opportunity for the Liverpool Knowledge Quarter Community
The Living Lab offers significant opportunities for collaboration between universities, NHS organisations, local authorities, SMEs, industry partners, charities and community organisations.
Potential areas of support include:
Co-design and stakeholder engagement
Real-world testing and evaluation
Innovation adoption and implementation
Development of funding bids and collaborative projects
Support for commercialisation and enterprise activity
Access to international Living Lab networks and partners through ENoLL
Proposed Events: A Living Lab Innovation Exchange
To strengthen connections between academia and industry across the Knowledge Quarter, LJMU is hosting a Living Lab Innovation Exchange.
If your organisation has an innovation challenge, emerging technology, service improvement opportunity or research idea that could benefit from real-world collaboration and testing, the LJMU Living Lab would welcome a conversation.
This would be an interactive event bringing together researchers, businesses, NHS partners, civic organisations and innovation leaders to
Share examples of research, innovation and service challenges currently being explored across the LCR
Provide an opportunity for organisations to briefly outline areas where they are seeking new ideas, evidence or expertise.
Create space for academics, businesses and public sector partners to meet and identify areas of mutual interest.
Encourage conversations that may lead to future collaborative activity across disciplines and sectors.
The format would focus on facilitated networking, challenge-led discussions and partnership development.
Dr Lisa Knight
Head of Innovation and Enterprise
Faculty of Health, Innovation, Technology and Science
Liverpool John Moores University
