To Örebro University

Many countries with ageing populations need to work on how to incorporate innovations of different forms into the ongoing process of change in social service, support and care of the elderly. In Sweden, a national initiative to innovate elderly care is taken. Norrlandicus Care Lab (NCL) is a test environment formed as a Living Lab for actors aiming to develop health and social care for elderly through innovation. NCL offers organizations and companies a test and evaluation method as an activity in their intrinsic development process, suited to services, processes and products. The vision is to conceptualize NCL into a European model to forge the challenges of elderly care to progress with new innovative businesses and ideas. Thus, the objective is to create an interdisciplinary open collaboration platform for actors who want to develop longterm care through innovation. Each innovation is assessed in NCL via quality measures from the users’ perspectives. This paper describes the foundation of the novel test method that is the basis for the NCL test process. Testing in NCL will be carried out by elderly themselves, health and social care staff and relatives together with different academic parts in a multidisciplinary test process. Products and services will be evaluated from three perspectives; the “care customer” (elderly or seniors), their relatives and health and social care professionals. There are two main quality criteria that guide the evaluation: quality as stated in the “National Values for Social Care of Elderly” and usability as a function of the innovation and its primary end-users. The expected result from an academic point of view is that the test method as such is validated and measures the contribution of the innovation in terms of “a dignified life for the elderly” as well as the degree of usability of the innovation. Expected results from the innovators and the aging society may vary depending on type of innovation. In Norrlandicus Care Lab, this unique method allows for interaction between innovators and senior stakeholders as well as other primary end-users in the elderly care sector. Thanks to the establishment of this novel method and the support from researchers, the users’ quality aspects are kept in focus when innovations for the aging society are tested in Norrlandicus Care Lab.