Living Labs Initiative

By Medical Devices and Health Technologies

PATH’s Living Labs Initiative accelerates the pace of health innovation to ensure that all communities have the solutions they need to live healthy lives. We do this by co-creating with users to rapidly design, test, and scale solutions to their long-standing challenges.

The Living Labs team uses human-centered design to work with end users to co-develop solutions aimed at accelerating the pace of innovation, lowering risk, and increasing the likelihood of realizing sustainable solutions.

Through PATH's world-renowned expertise in global health and longstanding relationships with governments and communities, we have built a strong reputation as a trusted partner and rapidly engage with key stakeholders to help deliver lasting results.

Designing solutions

We work with partners who have a general idea of what the health challenge is, but are trying to deeply understand the context and the users and come up with potential ideas for addressing the problem. Through participatory processes we gather insights from users, prioritize ideas to prototype and iterate until solutions are developed that meet their needs.

Exploring concepts

We use this process when there is already a firm understanding of the health problem and potential concepts to solve the problem. It lowers the risk of launching a new product or approach by providing an opportunity for rapid, initial user feedback and positioning for the concept, while simultaneously avoiding an expensive and time-consuming pilot of a concept that is not appropriate, scalable, or sustainable. We identify key stakeholders, collect feedback from end users through interviews or focus groups, and aggregate and analyze data to inform concept recommendations.

Testing prototypes

We test health prototypes or solutions with end users across different settings to inform what is working and what can be improved. We put early-stage solutions in the hands of end users; observe or simulate use with potential end users to discover strengths and weaknesses; and strategize improvements to make products or solutions market-ready.

Data analytics

The Living Labs team includes experts in quantitative analysis and data visualization. We pair routine health data from country health information systems with qualitative findings from our human-centered design engagements to generate new insights, prioritize locations and interventions, and determine which co-created solutions are most impactful.

“We are delighted to have an approach which involves the health care worker giving insights on the actual challenges we face, as compared to just looking at health statistics and not being sure what the real problem is.”

— District Health Officer, Zambia

Featured

Examples of our work

Our offices

Where we work

We have more than 20 design experts based at our offices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Kenya, and Zambia. The Living Labs draw upon PATH’s geographic footprint in 70+ countries and the 1500+ staff around the world, including scientists, public health experts, engineers, and business professionals.

Fact sheet

The Living Labs are ready to partner with your team.

Learn about our range of services, the estimated cost, and how we might address your organization’s needs in our Playbook. If you have questions or are interested in integrating Living Labs into current or future projects, contact livinglabs@path.org.

Playbook

“The Living Labs are great to partner with because their work is flowing into what we do in the government: identify problems with the staff at the health facilities, and co-create solutions with them.”

— Dr. Jelita Chinyonga, Director, Performance Improvement, MOH, Zambia

Chris Obong’o

Lead Product Manager, Living Labs Kenya
Dr. Joseph Kayaya

Lead Product Manager, Living Labs Zambia
Salva Mulongo

Technical Director, Living Labs Democratic Republic of the Congo
Mrs. Maguette Ndong

Technical Advisor, Living Labs Senegal
Brian Taliesin

Global Director, Living Labs
Bhavya Gowda

Deputy Director, Living Labs Initiative
Christina Smith

Senior Project Administrator