A national network of living labs for the aged and community care industry

Opportunity 

Australia’s aged and community care sector requires scalable, evidence-based approaches to digital innovation. While Living Labs have proven effective globally, Australia lacked a coordinated national model to translate innovations into real-world impact across diverse care settings. This project explored how a National Network of Living Labs could accelerate innovation through co-design involving providers, researchers, technology developers, caregivers and older Australians. 

Objectives 

This project addressed a critical gap: how to enable systematic, evidence-based digital innovation and translation across the aged care sector, aligned to policy reforms following the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.  

It set out to: 

• identify mechanisms to improve translation and scaling of innovation
• engage stakeholders across the sector through co-design
• develop a national framework for Living Labs in aged and community care.