Medical Circular Living Labs Guidebook
Keywords:
medical living labs, circular living labs, healthcare innovation, circular design, systemic designSynopsis
How can healthcare become more circular without compromising patient safety, clinical quality, or efficiency?
The Medical Circular Living Labs Guidebook offers a practical framework for turning circular ambitions into action. It shows how hospitals and their partners can create real-world innovation environments in which healthcare professionals, researchers, designers, suppliers, and policymakers, work together to develop, test, and improve circular solutions.
Developed as part of the ESCH-R project - Evidence-based Strategies to create Circular Hospitals - the guidebook builds on the knowledge and practical experience of a multidisciplinary research consortium working to advance circular healthcare.
Through an eight-step approach, the guidebook supports teams in defining their ambitions, establishing a Medical Circular Living Lab, co-creating and evaluating interventions, embedding lessons within the wider organisation, and working towards lasting systemic impact. Real-world cases demonstrate how these principles can be applied to medical products, material flows, clinical practices, and healthcare systems.
By combining circular design, systems thinking, experimentation, and collaborative learning, this guidebook offers both practical direction and strategic insight. It is a valuable resource for anyone working towards circular and sustainable healthcare - one experiment, one partnership, and one systemic change at a time.
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Data Availability Statement
This book presents guidance and practical insights derived from the ESCH-R project. No new research data were generated specifically for this publication. Where applicable, the underlying research data are managed within the ESCH-R project in accordance with the project’s data management arrangements.
