SkyeLab – Living Lab

The Vision for SkyeLab is to:

‘Be an internationally renowned Living Lab* specialising in the research, co-design and development of people-centred health and care services with a focus on remote, rural and island communities.

The Mission for SkyeLab is:

‘Within 24m of launch, to provide direct benefit to the community of Skye, Raasay, Lochalsh & South West Ross (SLRSWR) by providing local health and care training, demonstrator and research services’. 

Specifically, we aim to grow in four phases:

1. Training Facility: Immediately from launch, to provide a training space for use by local health and care statutory and voluntary organisations to train their staff and volunteers. This will include a storage facility for training materials eg resusc manikin.
2. Demonstrator Facility: Within 3-6m of launch, to provide a Demonstrator Service (ie a ‘Shop Window’) aimed at local carers and carees to demonstrate readily available ‘consumer grade’ Technology Enabled Care (TEC) devices and digital services, eg Amazon Alexa and similar aids to independent living. This will include an NHS ‘Near Me’ access point.
3. Living Lab (in Partner role): Within 9-12m of launch, to set up a Living Lab that will partner with existing research projects to trial and evaluate the efficacy of innovative TEC devices and services with a focus on their application in remote and rural island locations. By this stage we aim to host MSc research students on placements.
4. Living Lab (in Leading role): In the longer term (by April ’22), the Living Lab aims to lead its own fully funded Research & Development programme in Digital Health & Care in the context of remote, rural and island communities and partnering nationally and internationally with world-leading research organisations.