Customer segments in Health and Wellbeing Living Labs
End user: A person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use the product, service or process. In living lab project, end user is defined as a primary study participant who voluntarily participates research after giving informed consent to be the subject of the research.
Living lab research infrastructure end user: A person or organization who purchases or uses living lab research infrastructure services to conduct a specific contract based research and development activity (often focusing on specifically defined end user group). Living lab research infrastructure end user can also be study participant (a.k.a. end user), if living project is focusing on developing living lab services and infrastructure.
End users can be classified to non-professional and professional groups. Typical non-professional and professional end-user groups in health and wellbeing includes the following:
Non-professional end users:
- Consumers: Those who buy goods or services for their own use.
- Public health and social service clients: Those who use public services.
Professional end users
- Health professionals and managers: A person providing health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. Also known as healthcare professional or healthcare worker.
- Social care workers and managers: Those providing the practical support to help people cope with the day-to-day business of living based on formal training and experience.
- Policy and decisions makers: Those responsible for making policies and decisions at local, regional, national or international level.
Business-to-Business Customer (B2B): B2B-customer is an organization that purchases living lab services from a living lab. B2B-customers can be classified to private, public, education/ research, civil society organizations and networks/cluster groups as follows:
Private sector organizations: (business developers and researchers)
- Tangible equipment and device manufactures
- Health and social service providers
- e-health, IT system and digital technology providers
- Wellbeing and wellness service providers
- Pharmaceutical companies
Public sector organizations:
- Local level: Municipals, cities and other local level public organizations providing e.g. health and social services such as primary health care.
- Regional level: e.g. Regional hospitals providing secondary and tertiary care, councils, parliaments, and governments as well as other administrative organizations operating at regional level.
- National level: Government agencies, departments or temporary pointed working groups responsible for the specific functions such as health and social services.
- International level: European commission departments and agencies as well as other organizations operating at international and transnational level.
- Public funder: Government or other European, national, regional or local public institutions who is providing public funding for a specific living lab living lab research project via call for application process.
Education and research organizations:
- Higher education institutes: Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences
- Other educational institutes covering early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary education
- Public research institutions/organizations such as technical research centers and government laboratories.
- Private research organizations such as technology and innovation centers
Civil society organizations:
- Non-governmental organizations (NGO) and nonprofit entities operating at international, national, regional or local level.
Networks and clusters:
- Company cluster organizations and company networks
- International, national, regional and local networks
Typical approaches to define non-professional end users (a.k.a. study participants) in health and wellbeing living lab projects are presented in Table .
Age or age group | |||
Specific age range |
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Elderly | Adults | Youth | Children |
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Health status | |||
Healthy | Patient | Rehabilitant | Recovered/Survivor |
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A specific disease, disorder or disability | |||
ADHD | Dementia | Parkinsons’ disease | Loneliness and Social Isolation |
Autism | Down syndrome | Physical disability | Mental health |
Cardiovascular disease | Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) | Sleep apnea/apnea | Mild cognitive impairment |
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) | Language disability | Substance abuse (drugs, alcohol) | Multiple sclerosis |
Cognitive disorder (mild, major) | Intellectual disability/ Learning difficulty/ Mental retardation | Trauma patient (e.g., a spinal cord injury) | Neurodegenerative diseases |
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Clients of a specific service | |||
Child welfare | Nursing home | Employment service |
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Early childhood education | Home care |
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Vulnerable groups | |||
Minors/Children | Single parents with minor children | Persons subjected to psychological, physical or sexual violence | Substance users (drugs, alcohol) |
Disabled people | Victims of trafficking in human beings | Ethnic minorities and immigrants | Isolated people |
Elderly people | Persons with serious illnesses | Homeless people | Ex-prisoners and people with criminal background |
Pregnant women | Persons with mental disorders |
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Living lab research infrastructure end users and B2B-customers in health and wellbeing living lab projects are presented in Table .
| Researcher expertise | Brief use case description |
| Policy Makers | Studying the impact of new service models or new collaboration models in healthcare, designing or improving policies, gathering requirements for improving health and wellbeing of citizens, co-creation of research methodologies for policy making |
| Experts in communication studies | Defining written, oral, visual and digital communication within a certain workplace. Evaluating (multi professional) healthcare team collaboration, communication and debriefing in various healthcare situations in simulated environments (especially in Simulation lab) |
| Computer/Technology Scientists | Developing systems/tools/ technologies, testing and evaluating an ICT tool, prototype and real-life testing, computer vision & AI, Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality, Cybersecurity |
| (Clinical, social, developmental, neuro-) Psychologists | Studying the behaviour and the mental wellbeing of participants, conducting psychometrics evaluation and real-life setting experimentation/observation/real life testing |
| Social workers/researchers | Conducting an investigation in accordance with the scientific methods and tools, studying the impact of new care models and/or care innovations on society, developing models for a caring and inclusive society |
| Researchers with clinical expertise | (Doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, specialists, physiotherapists etc.), conducting research of healthcare services and practices, research on symptomatology or epidemiology of a disease, analysis of clinical effects of research performed in the study, e.g; via real life testing |
| Experts in UX research and assessment | Developing the process for user experience design (UXD, UED, or XD) supporting user behavior through usability, usefulness, and desirability provided in the interaction with a product or service, addressing all aspects as perceived by users with a focus on the quality of the user experience. Studying and experimenting the best practices for UI/UX and evaluating user’s experience in different situations and while using different tools |
| Experts in sport science | Experimenting novel training methods, and their effectiveness in various dimensions such as safety, engagement, and physical capabilities. Studying the impact of physical movements in various functions and wellbeing features |
| Experts in rehabilitation (physical, cognitive) | Physiology, physiotherapy, occupational health research, rehabilitation and prevention. Cognitive diseases assistive technology, neuromuscular rehabilitation assistive technology |
| Experts in performing arts | Creative health improvement (e.g. for cognitive decline) through music and dance (example: redesigning public spaces into healthy spaces: test and validate Smart methodologies, products and services through folk dance) |
| Business developers | Studying the product-market fit, matching a solution with a societal need, learning about the user acceptance of products and services, as well as about potential products to develop, willingness to pay, business model and ideal route to market |
| Pedagogues/educators | Evaluating different pedagogical approaches and their impact learning performance (especially in Simulation lab) |
| Experts in applied economics | Evaluating cost and performance in different healthcare processes, situations and public health |
| Experts in ergonomics and safety | Implementation and validation of ergonomic technologies/services to support workers and system performance, promoting ergonomics in working environments, improving both health/well-being and productivity, while avoiding occupational hazards |
| Citizen Scientists / users as co-researchers | User empowerment, training, design, analysis and implementation of strategies and methodologies for user engagement and for raising awareness and generating citizen participation |
| Biomedical researchers | Studying biochemical and physiological functions, investigating how the human body works with the aim of finding new ways to improve health. Biomedical engineering knowledge (Home hospitalization, Transitional Care, Multifunctional interaction), as well as digital biomarkers analysis (e.g. for cognitive state) |
| Experts in accessibility Design | Validating accessible Architectonics and escape route models with VR experiment and real-life simulations |
| Neuroscientists | Focusing on the brain and its impact on behaviour and cognitive functions (cognitive neuroscience, EEG-based BMI research, protocol / paradigm testing, study framework evaluation) |
| Innovation and design management researchers | Ecosystem and innovation management research, social network analysis. Evaluating how health and wellbeing ecosystem operates between different actors at local, regional, national and international level, including also scaling and commercialization |
| Experts in organizational studies | Co-creation, experimentation, organizational research, experts by experience / pier support included. Evaluation how multistakeholder collaboration and co-creation is done and how effective it is. Evaluates experimentations and experimentation culture. How users are involved into these processes |
| Data Scientists | Collecting, analysing and interpreting digital data, such as data analytics in healthcare and digital patient recordings (how patient information recording process is managed and utilized during the intervention by using digital tools in simulated situations) |