Autonom’Lab is a public living lab supported by the Nouvelle Aquitaine region and the regional health agency to foster innovation for elderly and disabled.
Autonom’Lab is a public living lab created and supported by regional policy in order to find answers to demographic change that the region is facing. As ageing is a process that impact multiple policy aspects (social care, health care, innovation field, education, economic development…) the region chose in 2010 to equip itself of a living lab focused on innovation for elderly and disabled people with the aim of adopting a quadruple helix approach.
The GIP Autonom'Lab provides a mission of general interest to evaluate and develop innovations that can promote aging well, whether in terms of health or autonomy.
Functioning on the principles of a living lab, it gathers stakeholders from research and education field, health, social and medico-social sectors, and economic development as well as users, professionals and regional public authorities in order to foster and develop innovations that are relevant to improve quality of life of our elderlies.
It ensures a business intelligence and monitoring, participates in organizations of regional dissemination events, it openly spreads results of its work and it also supports economic actors in the acceleration and experimentation of their solutions.
The GIP Autonom'Lab thus ensures a mission of public service of accelerator of the innovations in the field of active and healthy aging.
Resources needed
Autonom'Lab is a living lab: its main resource is the engagement of people in working groups sharing time, experience and expertise.
We are a team of 9 people with a annual budget of about 600 000 euros. Last year we organized around 80 working group related to smart healthy ageing.
Evidence of success
Nowadays Autonom’Lab has spread a culture of “open” innovation in favour of an active and healthy ageing. Thanks to its work results have been achieved: Last year >50 collaborative workshops gathering more than 600 participants ; 3 collective studies to identify users' needs (regional state of the art and mapping): adapted housing for older people, how to support informal carers, home helpers sector. In two years 150 new partners actively involved.
4 European projects and 10 ongoing initiatives
Difficulties encountered
Lot of effort put into partners’ mobilisation in order to strengthen the ecosystem.
Lot of time dedicated to needs analysis (one year process for each collaborative study).
Need to be endorsed by regional authorities to have a bigger impact.
Potential for learning or transfer
Quadruple helix involvement with a wide panel of stakeholders coming from different domains of activities and having different experiences is a key success factor to make innovation real, particularly when we talk about ageing that is a complex matter.
In order to stimulate innovation it is important to have a “facilitator” able to coordinate regional ecosystem and discuss with both demand and supply side of the market. Autonom’Lab is trying to play this role in Nouvelle Aquitaine with a living lab approach: encouraging discussions, mapping good practices and advising regional policy makers.
