Community Living Lab
The Community Living Lab is a 300m² purpose-built space at the heart of CDHT’s Belfast hub. It provides a smart, flexible environment where innovators, researchers, clinicians, and community partners can co-design and test new digital healthcare products and services in everyday settings.
Why use the Community Living Lab?
The lab offers a one-stop shop for innovators, helping you with:
- Funding support – guidance on sourcing and applying for project funding
- Expert input – access to clinical, academic, and industry expertise
- Trial design – help with structuring trials and navigating ethical approval
- User groups – connections to patients, healthcare professionals, and community participants
- Collaboration – accelerated networking with potential partners across the ecosystem
What makes the Lab unique?
The Community Living Lab provides a dynamic testing space focused on primary healthcare and everyday living. Facilities include:
- Smart GP environments for real-world trials
- Simulated spaces such as pharmacies, hospital wards, homes, gyms, offices, and transport
- Support for testing in community and home-based care contexts
This live environment bridges the gap between innovation and implementation, enabling agile, human-focused design.
Opportunities for Innovation
The Belfast site is closely aligned with the regional Encompass initiative, which is introducing electronic health and social care records across Northern Ireland. This creates opportunities to test emerging solutions such as:
- Unified patient profiles
- Supported decision making processes for clinicians
- Patient-facing communication platforms
Positioned at the heart of CDHT within its core building on Frederick Street next to Ulster University's York Street Campus in Belfast, the Community Living Lab is surrounded by industry partners, researchers, and clinicians. It is ideally placed to support innovation in:
- Home-based monitoring and lifestyle analysis
- Wearable and connected health technologies
- Patient-centred design for digital healthcare solutions
The Community Living Lab turns ideas into impact by testing healthcare technologies in the real-world spaces where patients and clinicians live, work, and care.
