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 the following table .

 

 

Typical approaches to define professional end users in health and wellbeing living lab projects are presented in the following table .

Living lab research infrastructure end users and B2B-customers in health and wellbeing living lab projects are presented in the table below .