Eighteen months of hbo-living labs Medical Delta: time for a mid-term review

During an online meeting on 3 February, the four Medical Delta hbo-living labs presented their first experiences and results to the boards of the colleges affiliated with Medical Delta. The objective of the programme, which started in the middle of 2020, is to strengthen the cooperation between the universities of applied sciences and their affiliation with Medical Delta.

Under the chairmanship of Dr Marleen Goumans, the labs looked ahead and discussed common challenges. The role of the universities of applied sciences within Medical Delta as an indispensable step in the acceleration of the health & technology innovation chain was once again underlined - not only as educators of the health professionals of the future, but also in setting up and executing practice-based research.

"Just do it"

In her introduction, Goumans emphasised that living labs are pre-eminently learning systems in which students, citizens, researchers and the business community develop, research, test, learn and implement. The question is how technology can make the difference. "Sometimes we know how it can provide support, sometimes we don't- or we don't know how to use it at all. In a living lab, you investigate and design an innovation in co-creation, with an integral approach.

Challenges for the future

After almost eighteen months, clear challenges are emerging for the future, such as involving various parties and passing on research projects or developments to each other for greater efficiency. Participation of and cooperation between students from different healthcare and technology programmes is of great importance.

Medical Delta director David de Glint emphasised during the meeting that the institutes for higher professional education form an indispensable next step in the actual roll-out from prototype to practice - which makes them very valuable to academic knowledge institutes and UMCs as well. The first collaborations in this area are already a fact.

The Medical Delta hbo-living labs programme will run for at least another 2.5 years, whereby the focus and the challenge will mainly be on setting up and carrying out research projects, the further development of care innovations and the sustainability and broadening of the collaboration.

More information about the labs can be found here.

A video of the meeting can be watched here (in Dutch).