Clinical Living Lab
Based within the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, the Clinical Living Lab connects innovators directly with clinicians, patients, and potentially cutting-edge hospital facilities. It’s where healthcare technologies can be tested, refined, and accelerated in real clinical environments.
Driving collaboration with clinical staff in areas such as cardiology and pulmonology, projects through CDHT, will provide specialist facilities and access to expertise to accelerate research and innovation.
What does the Clinical Living Lab offer?
By working side by side with clinical teams, you gain:
- Validation and co-design – collaborate with clinicians to shape new products, processes, and services
- Real-world feedback – test with patient cohorts and iterate rapidly in a live healthcare environment
- Access to expertise – benefit from direct clinician engagement and input throughout the innovation process
- Specialist equipment – use advanced clinical technologies dedicated to R&D
- Support for trials – run small-scale clinical trials with diverse patient groups
- Faster innovation – accelerate your route to market with prototyping and testing built into real workflows
This collaborative approach strengthens value propositions, reduces risk, and speeds up development.
What does the Clinical Living Lab support?
The Clinical Living Lab supports a wide range of activities, including:
- Real-time, real-life operating theatre access with monitoring equipment and sensors
- Application of AI in theatres and clinical settings
- Workflow co-design and management
- Designing integrated care pathways
- Clinical training and protocol redesign to improve safety and efficiency
- R&D of minimally invasive instruments, implants, and wearables
- Co-morbidity diagnostics
- E-Health applications in rehabilitation (e.g. heart failure, falls prevention)
- Medication support through digital tools
- Physiological monitoring and point-of-care diagnostics
- UX trials, interventional science approaches and self-use systems
- Digital health interoperability
- Wireless and AI-enabled solutions
Facilities and Capabilities
Key facilities available within the Clinical Living Lab include:
- Trusted Research Environment for secure health data analysis
- Scanning suites and image analysis tools
- Smart Theatres of the future with surgical robotics and advanced imaging
- Image-guided therapy technologies
- Surgical robots
- Diagnostics and vital signs monitoring
- Design and rapid prototyping labs for device development
- Modelling, simulation and product development
- Diagnostics innovation suites for next-generation testing
- Meeting rooms for project teams and collaborators
The Clinical Living Lab combines rigour, realism, and collaboration. It’s where healthcare technologies move from concept to clinical impact.
